Preview: Things I Know to be True

Not many plays make you laugh, gasp out loud and cry straight off the page, but this one did all three the first time I read it. It’s a beautiful, touching story of a family going through changes, and it will absolutely resonate in some way with everyone who comes to see it.

I wanted a cast that looked and felt like it could be a real family, who had a sense of ease with each other, and a real understanding of and connection with the emotional depth of this play. I also wanted to reflect the diversity and authenticity of experience of people in the UK today to be able to reflect their stories accurately.

So many! First and foremost it’s about family, aging and change, but also ambition, identity, becoming who and what you want to be, and what you might be prepared to sacrifice in the process. There are some hard-hitting references to drug-taking, violence and transphobia, but despite the appearance of bleakness, I think overall it is about love.

We’ll meet Bob (David Wainwright) and Fran (Susanne Joseph), and their four grown-up children Pip, Mark/Mia, Ben and Rosie (Leonie Nicks, Matilda Staples, Sam Rattue and Tabitha Milne), all looking forward to, or at least anticipating, the next step or phase of their lives. They are a very tight-knit family, for better or for worse, and the play explores what keeps them together and what also may be driving them apart.

I hope everyone watching will see themselves in at least one of the characters and maybe through that, find a way to look at their own lives in a new way. The play covers a lot of things that are often unsaid in families, and so in some ways I hope it will start some conversations about things people have not felt able to have before.

Love. Family. Hope.