The Company Man

Synopsis

'If we don't leave happy, peaceful children behind us when we go then? what on earth do we leave?' With his love of birdwatching, cricket and carefully tended sunflowers, retired company man William ought to be able to look back on his life, his work and his family from a place of contentment. But can he? Meanwhile his wife Jane has gathered those closest to her for one particular week-end and as she travels through her past she asks: have I done the right things with my life? A moving and poignant family portrait.

Our Review:

Nancy Groves - 6 November 2010

"Four years, one month, 16 days." This, the length of time since wayward son Richard last visited the family home at the heart of Torben Betts' new play at the Orange Tree Theatre. We know this because his father William, the company man of the title, reminds him. Repeatedly. But Richard is back now, ostensibly to see his wheelchair bound mother Jane before she succumbs entirely to the muscular dystrophy eating away at her body. Also visiting her this sunny summer day is the family's old neighbour James, while supervising them all is Cathy, the spinster sister who has put her own life on hold while she cares for her mum.

"All the people that ever loved me ... and that I ever loved," says Jane, desperate to make things right. But this is not a happy home, nor was it ever one, despite its outward trappings of self-made wealth. As we might expect from Betts, this is a painful portrait of the dysfunction that so often lies beneath the veneer of middle-class life, casting the gene...

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