Forget Me Not

In Australia, Gerry hopes to meet his mother for the first time. Despite being almost sixty, he has spent his whole life believing he’s an orphan. In Liverpool, Mary brews a good, strong pot of tea. Nothing posh. But she’s as nervous as a pig at a butcher’s. Determined to uncover his past, Gerry and his daughter Sally embark on an extraordinary journey home – halfway across the world – in a precarious bid to bring their family together. Through a program created by the British Government and eagerly supported by an Australia in the throes of its ‘White Australia’ policy, between 1945 and 1968 over three thousand British children were told they were orphans and sent to Australia on a promise of warmth, fresh air, abundant food and opportunity. Instead they arrived to deprived institutions where neglect and abuse were the norm. Tom Holloway’s tender new play unearths a secret buried by time that, in turn, exposes a world of historical injustices currently in the limelight.