Visitors - Barney Norris

On a farmhouse at the edge of Salisbury Plain, a family is falling apart. Stephen can’t afford to put his mother into care; Arthur can’t afford to stop working and look after his wife. When a young stranger with blue hair moves in to care for Edie as her mind unravels, the family are forced to ask: are we living the way we wanted? Visitors is a haunting, beautiful look at the way our lives slip past us.

"We don’t see many plays on our contemporary stages that address the subject of aging, and most certainly not plays that brim with the humanity, insight, wit and pathos of Visitors. It’s a triumph of achievement and the fact that it is 27-year-old Barney Norris’s first full-length drama makes it even more remarkable... Parts this finely written are manna for actors... This is a quietly ? but utterly ? magnificent piece of writing. Be a visitor to it." - Evening Standard

"Infinitely touching...a mature and tender play. [Norris] is an authentic new voice." - Guardian

"An absolute beauty, by turns funny, tender and desperately sad. There is great richness and an almost poetic resonance in the writing so that we can almost see the play of light across their fields and apprehend the jolting dislocation of dementia. It is much harder to write interestingly about happiness than it is about misery, but Norris often does just that." - Telegraph

"It’s a hefty subject ? the way dementia destroys people’s minds and families ? but Norris’s excellent play deals with it with surprising lightness of touch and humour." - Time Out London

"A tender, elegiac, beautifully written and observed play." - Mail on Sunday