Groping for Words

The play looks at Adult Literacy Classes with a touch of humour and a hint of poignancy. Who is Thelma hiding her employer’s mail in the wardrobe? Why is George living in the infants school’s Wendy house? Why is Kevin inhaling toxic fumes in the gents’ toilets? And why is Joyce, a doctor’s wife from Streatham, bothering to teach this fractious bunch of no-hopers to read and write? Both funny and cruel, Sue Townsend‘s play brings together four odd, yet engaging, characters in the improbable setting of an infants school. Each nurses the wounds of past humiliation. But all now have a common purpose: to find the words that will free them form the legacy of their failed education.