Blessings – Riverside Studios

The Deacons are a respectable middle-class Catholic family living in an English town, doing their best to raise a family and earn a living. But this is 1969. There is a social transformation going on in England. The permissive society is well on its way, women’s voices are becoming increasingly strident, skirts are getting shorter, and pop music is embracing the youth movement. In the wider world: the Americans are getting close to putting a man on the moon and closer to home, the troubles in Northern Ireland are a continual concern. Sarah Shelton’s new play, which premieres at the Riverside Studios, shows how the various members of the Deacon family struggle to come to terms with these new external realities and the pressure it places on family harmony.  Beneath it all, there are some long disguised tensions which bubble to the fore. This is a well-constructed play with intertwining themes, which prevent much more of the plot being revealed in a review.  Suffice it to say it is 90 minutes of engrossing theatre.

This is a very pacey play made up of a very large number of short scenes. In less competent hands it could have dragged, but Sarah Shelton, who also directed, and her set designer Alice Carroll, created a composite set, avoiding the pitfalls of a conventional box set. The central part of the stage was the Deacon’s living room with sufficient 1960s furniture, including a wonderful period radiogram, to set the scene. This was backed by four large angled flats, painted in pop art colours. The sides were darker playing areas, which represented the other scenes in a church, bus stop and park. The cast were able to move rapidly between the various areas for their frequent entrances and exits.  The theme was completed by good costume choices and lots of snippets of 60s pop music.

The acting accolades of the evening must go to the two older actors Gary Webster and Anna Acton as the father and mother. They perfectly reflected the dilemmas of the older generation faced with “sons and daughters beyond your command” as Bob Dylan would have put it. The younger actors were playing characters younger than themselves, and while they made a very good effort to reflect the speech patterns, movement and moods of teenagers, it was impossible to completely suspend belief. Four of the six actors doubled, playing two significant parts each. I was unsure whether this had been deliberately written into the play or was due to the financial constraints on modern theatre, but I think it would have worked better had there been no doubling. It would have also made it easier for the cast to complete their frequent and very rapid costume changes.

This is a very well written play, well-acted and with excellent production choices. I would thoroughly recommend it.

Blessings is on at the Riverside Studios until 26th October. Tickets are available from www.riversidestudios.co.uk or 020 823 7101.

Reviewer: Paul Ackroyd

Reviewed: 2nd October 2025

North West End UK Rating: