“I wish there could be a day where families came together and just said it all to each other. Because then everyone would know it all, and there’d be nothing left to hurt anyone.”
Sussex. London. Wiltshire. Northamptonshire. Wales. Over three decades, a family spreads across the country, and the chord they once made together starts to fray. How will the distance growing between them change the music of their lives?
Seven years after making his name at Arcola with Visitors and Eventide, Barney Norris returns home with a brand new play.
We Started To Sing is a love song to the people who raised him, and a hymn to the bravery of our brief lives.
Barney Norris’ previous work at Arcola: Eventide (2015) and Visitors (2014), which won the Critics’ Circle Award and the Off West End Award for Most Promising Playwright. His other plays include Nightfall (Bridge Theatre); While We’re Here (Bush Theatre); Echo’s End (Salisbury Playhouse); and acclaimed adaptations of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Federico García Lorca’s Blood Wedding. His novels include Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, Turning for Home, and The Vanishing Hours.
★★★★★ “outstanding...beautiful...a perfect reopening for Arcola Theatre” – WestEndBestFriend
★★★★ “ filled with meaning” – ReviewsHub
“a tender family drama” – The Times
“full of tenderness...visually arresting...atmospheric” – The Guardian
