A Mother's Devotion

Ray Davies' and the Kinks' 1969 masterpiece, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), told the story of a working-class Englishman's emigration to Australia in search of opportunity and prosperity. Australian Tom Holloway's play Forget Me Not uses the dramatic form to explore similar themes of flight, dislocation, fraught family dynamics and how love endures over great stretches of time and distance. Unlike Arthur though, Gerry is a mere child who -- like thousands of other British kids between 1945 and 1968 -- was packed off to Australia from his native UK, in his own case when he was only three years old. Now touching 60, he returns to England for the first time since he left it in order to find his mother, whom he hasn't seen once in the intervening 50-plus years. Find out how the mother and child reunion goes at Upstream Theater's production of Forget Me Not. It's staged at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and at 7 p.m. Sunday (January 31 through February 15) and at 3 p.m. Sunday, February 16, in the Black Box Theatre at the Kranzberg Arts Center (501 North Grand Boulevard; 314-863-4999 or www.upstreamtheater.org). Tickets are $20 to $30.
Thursdays-Sundays. Starts: Jan. 31. Continues through Feb. 16, 2014