THE INSPIRATION
My dad made wooden boxes and puzzles. Every year he would send my sisters and I one of those boxes for our birthdays. On the anniversary of his death, I decided to create an absurd love letter to the strange times we did spend together, and my comic obsession about the times we didn’t.
This final version has been 4 years in the making, and it would not have been possible without the extremely talented and generous collaborators who helped bring this show to life.
I have performed the piece twice, pre-pandemic, at the Unity Theatre, Liverpool, and the Arts Centre, Ormskirk, with many audience members wanting to share their own stories of absent fathers with me after the show.
Part autobiography, part exaggeration for comic and dramatic effect. The Long Way Home is my fantastical and absurd quest to come to terms with my absent father’s inheritance.
REVIEWS
‘Ben Phillips is a truly fantastic performer.…. It was a thoroughly enjoyable piece of theatre.’
NORTH WEST END ★★★★
‘...a wonderful, complex, emotionally
charged and highly affecting
performance experience...’
ARTS CENTRE, ORMSKIRK
‘A touching, complex and funny
performance this evening to an
appreciative and full house’
UNITY THEATRE, LIVERPOOL