Family Business

A 7digital production with Living Theatre Productions and Royal & Derngate for BBC Radio 4 (2004)

A state-of-the-nation docu-drama about family relationships, national identity and commerce, by acclaimed Critic’s Choice winning playwright Alecky Blythe with original music and sound design by Adam Cork. 

Created from edited recordings collected in John Lewis stores across the UK, this funny, provocative, and fast-moving story offers extraordinary insight into the aspirations of the British shopper, making important purchases for life’s key moments from cradle to grave.

In 2014, Alecky Blythe embarked on writing a play, focusing on customers in John Lewis, shopping for the many different key life stages. She recorded interviews with shoppers struggling with leaving home, furnishing flats, negotiating families, weddings, divorces, affairs, christenings and retirement. Ten years later, Alecky returned to talk to the same people to see how life had dealt with them.

Her plays are created from recorded conversations with real people which are edited and become the text spoken by actors. The ensemble of actors do not work with scripts, but are fed their lines, spoken by the interviewees in the edited recordings, through earpieces in the studio. They reproduce what they hear as faithfully as they can, down to the last pause and vocal tick.