Nature vs Nurture amid the peafields
A kind of ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ for the stage.
In the early 1960s a trio of women, Susan, Ella and Marg, go pea picking in the fields of North Essex. Susan’s child, Daryl, the product of a liaison with a black US airman from a nearby airbase, gets passed around amongst the women as they work, laugh, fight and cry. The suddenly one day he is sent over to America to be raised by his father.
Thirty-five years later, Daryl, now a high-flying academic in the brave new world of genetics, returns to Cambridge for an international conference and drives down the road to ask…why?
Peapickers is a fascinating new play that switches between two groundbreaking eras. As Daryl tries to unpick the workings of nature and nurture and avoid a personal breakdown, he finally faces up to his own genetic inheritance.
