The Unreturning

‘I want to return to my home.’

A Northern British coastal town. Three young men are coming home from war.

Their stories, set at different times over a hundred years, are beautifully interwoven in Anna Jordan’s The Unreturning, a play that explores the profound effect that war has on young people’s lives, and asks - what does coming home really mean? What is home? And when experience has shattered you into a million pieces, will home help to put you together again, or treat you as an ugly truth it does not want to confront?

The Unreturning was premiered at Theatre Royal Plymouth in September 2018, in a co-production between Frantic Assembly and Theatre Royal Plymouth, before touring the UK.

‘A moving meditation on war and masculinity… Jordan paints a complex picture of masculinity, its crises, its toxicity and its deepest feelings… the writing is sensitive’
- The Arts Desk

‘A feverishly intense drama… visceral and insightful’
- Time Out

‘An incredibly moving show, full of beautifully interwoven stories which are sensitively told, hard-hitting and immensely poignant at the same time… there is so much for students to choose from for a scripted exam performance, and there are beautiful monologues from each character to explore’
- Drama & Theatre Magazine

‘Brutally and beautifully honest’
- Broadway World

‘Anna Jordan’s poetic piece interweaves three stories, flicking back and forth in history as timeless threads are followed, linked and knotted’
- British Theatre Guide

‘An absorbing, thought-provoking piece of new writing… [Jordan] creates dialogue and especially soliloquies of shuddering power’
- The Reviews Hub