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 som...