Going Home

Washington Theatre Group presents Going Home by Alan Plater.
Friday 18 August – 7.30pm + Saturday 19 August – 2pm, tickets £6

A Geordie’s journey home, through the music that haunts his dreams and the memories that never leave him, to a very different Newcastle.

Bob is a wandering Geordie who found his way to Sydney, Australia in 1960. Every August he gets restless. A man should be on his home terraces for the first match of the season. The BBC World Service isn’t enough. Besides, there’s always the Sydney Harbour Bridge to remind him of the older, more homely version spanning the Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead.

In his own words:

‘I’d been for supper at Doyle’s. The best fish restaurant in Sydney. Overlooking the harbour. They sell oysters at a price a working man can afford. And I heard the music. Floating across the water, like it had come all the way from the Tyne. And I know it’s crazy, man, but that’s when I knew. It was time. Time for me to be going home.’

Back home, he meets the ghosts of Tyneside past and present: his family: the mate he played football with: the girl who used to watch the games; and the old musician who once heard Coleman Hawkins playing Body and Soul.

GOING HOME deals with the long journey from Then to Now, the stops along the way and the music that haunts our dreams.

Note: contains language that may be offensive