VAMOS Theatre Company are back with a new show, The Best Thing, set in the Swinging Sixties and inspired, artistic director Rachael Savage reveals, by an article she read in The Guardian more than two years ago.

"It was a piece about forced adoption in the 1960s, and a group of women who had launched The Movement for an Adoption Apology," she explains. "It was looking at the pressures on young mothers who'd conceived out of wedlock and how and why they were forced to give up their babies - pressure from parents, the church, society. And how they are seeking an apology for having been coerced into giving up their babies.

"Interestingly, all the women I went on to speak to felt there was no other choice, but that article was the first seed.

"One thing that amazed me was that, when I'd written the first structure of the show, so many women had such similar stories.

"I researched all their stories and the more people I met the more detail went into the show.

"There was a line in The Guardian article, a quote from Helen Jeffreys, who said "I couldn't believe, when I met my son, how similar he was to my father. He looked like him and had similar mannerisms. They even had the same hobbies and interests."

That line led Rachael to extend the focus of the show. "I really wanted to look at the other characters, not just the mother. I wanted to look at how this decision was always thought to be 'the best thing' and how it affected other people."

When Helen Jeffreys' father met his grandson, he asked his daughter 'Why was he adopted?' But, she said, he was the one who told me to leave the house."

"I then spoke to one of the babies, who is now my age, mid-forties, and so much about her story and about how the decision affected her - and her whole being is apologetic - she feels so desperately insecure and unloved.

"It's very painful," says Rachael of the show. "But it's funny and light, too, with all those joyful and quirky Vamos touches before we pull the rug out from underneath the audience.

Helen Jeffreys has seen the show, and emailed to say that she now felt she understood her son more. "Since seeing the show and seeing how this decision affected his life, I have to go back to him and tell him I'm learning something."

For Rachael, this response "is the most important thing. We want to make genuine human connections so that was very powerful.

"Like the other shows, I try to leave it on a hopeful note. But you don't really know a show until audiences watch it.

"It's been two years in the making and now it's gone on tour so I feel slightly bereft. It's a very odd feeling, letting a show go. I keep a keen eye on it though - we can always work harder and make it better.

The show is also about the birth of the teenager, the pill, the music the fashion of the sixties. It's a real celebration of that because we like to celebrate as well as make people think.

"It has been a hard one," says Rachael. "Especially for the actress who plays Susan. She's a mother, so it's heartbreaking to be away from her own children and then having to give away her baby on stage every night. But mask theatre doesn't work if you don't feel it.

I tell the cast they have to have as much fun as possible in the first half because that's what makes it work. And in the second half you have to really feel it.

Already at work on the next show, which will look at PTSD on returning forces personnel, Rachael says of her role as writer, director and maker of memorable theatre: "I love it. It's inspiring and interesting and I am doing what I want to do."

The Best Thing will be at Ludlow Assembly Rooms tomorrow night at 7.30pm. To book, call the box office on 01584 878141 or go to ludlowassemblyrooms.co.uk. For details of all tour dates, visit www.vamostheatre.co.uk

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