Island Town ✮✮✮/ Blackthorn ✮✮✮✮- Weston Studio

Daisy Graceson in Island Town Photographer: Ed Felton Small towns haunt contemporary British drama. They appear as places to escape, places to return to, places that continue shaping people long after they have left. Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s pairing of Simon Longman’s Island Town and Charley Miles’ Blackthorn, understands that shared preoccupation. One play concerns itself with people unable to leave. The other follows two people who do, only to discover that departure solves less than it promises. Together they form a conversation about geography, ambition and the strange persistence of home. What links the two works is not simply subject matter but a fascination with inertia. In Island Town, a group of young people find themselves trapped within a community whose horizons seem to shrink with every passing year. In Blackthorn, two childhood friends discover that the places which formed them can become increasingly difficult to recognise. Both plays ask what happens when…