# Touched (play) > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Touched_(play) > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Touched_(play).md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touched_(play) > Source revision: 1271460557 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) ***Touched*** is a play by English playwright [Stephen Lowe](/source/Stephen_Lowe_(playwright)). The play opened at the Nottingham Playhouse on 9 June 1977, directed by [Richard Eyre](/source/Richard_Eyre). It was revived at the [Royal Court](/source/Royal_Court_Theatre) in January 1981, in a new production by [William Gaskill](/source/William_Gaskill). Both productions starred [Marjorie Yates](/source/Marjorie_Yates) as Sandra. The play was joint winner of the [George Devine Award](/source/George_Devine_Award) in 1977.[1] In February 2006, it was one of the fifty plays chosen by the Royal Court to represent the fifty-year history of the [English Stage Company](/source/English_Stage_Company) with readings in the Theatre Upstairs - *Look Back: 50 readings, 50 writers, 50 plays*.[2] The rehearsed reading of Touched took place on 22 February 2006, with [Anne-Marie Duff](/source/Anne-Marie_Duff) as Sandra.[3] [Nick Hern Books](/source/Nick_Hern_Books) published a new edition of the play to coincide with this production, with a new afterword by Lowe.[4] The play has been revived many times by regional theatres in England, including Derby Playhouse and Salisbury Playhouse,[5] and colleges, including RADA and Canterbury College in February 2011.[6] In February 2017, [Nottingham Playhouse](/source/Nottingham_Playhouse) celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the play with a new production starring [Vicky McClure](/source/Vicky_McClure) as Sandra.[7] Five of the cast were graduates of the [Central Junior Television Workshop](/source/Central_Junior_Television_Workshop) in Nottingham: Vicky McClure, [Aisling Loftus](/source/Aisling_Loftus), Chloe Harris, [Luke Gell](/source/Luke_Gell) and George Boden.[8] ## Plot and themes The play is set in 1945 during the hundred days between [VE Day](/source/VE_Day) in May 1945 and [VJ Day](/source/VJ_Day) in August 1945, a period which also included the election of the first ever [Labour government](/source/Labour_Government_1945%E2%80%931951) and the dropping of the atomic bomb on [Hiroshima and Nagasaki](/source/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki). The play focuses on a group of women in a working-class suburb of [Nottingham](/source/Nottingham), especially Sandra and her sisters, Joan and Betty. Sandra has lost a child: not killed by an enemy bomb, but by a car in the [blackout](/source/Blackout_(wartime)). Now, with peace coming, she is full of hope for a different kind of future. She says, "The world's changing. It's not going to go back to the way it was."[9] Lowe was inspired to write the play by his mother: "I grew up on the usual pulp of heroic war films and comics... While therefore I gained a fairly graphic picture of the life of a soldier, it occurred to me while talking to my mother that I had hardly any picture of those who stayed at home - those whose battles had been fought in the landscape I had grown up in. I knew nothing, really, about the sacrifices and suffering of the women who only a few years later were to pick me up and put me down, and place pennies in my hand. Pennies I had never thought to return."[10] As critic Lyn Gardner says, the play reflects “both the social mores of the time and the inner emotional lives of these down-to-earth women. It understands their tribal loyalties and their stern sense of working-class morality, forbidding fraternisation with the Italian POWs that might put one of their number beyond the pale.”[11] Time Out said of the play, "Touched is truly identified with working people and a radical vision, unlike many contemporary plays for which the same claim is made."[12] ## Sources - *Touched* by Stephen Lowe, [Methuen](/source/Methuen_Publishing) 1981 ISBN 0-413-48510-2 - *Touched* by Stephen Lowe, [Nick Hern Books](/source/Nick_Hern_Books) 2006 ISBN 1-85459-925-9 - [www.stephenlowe.co.uk](https://web.archive.org/web/20120204122317/http://www.stephenlowe.co.uk/) ## References 1. *Touched* by Stephen Lowe, [Methuen](/source/Methuen_Publishing) 1981, p 5. 1. [Look Back: 50 readings, 50 writers, 50 plays. Royal Court website, archived page, 2006.](http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/look-back-50-readings-50-writers-50-years) 1. Latest News, Stephen Lowe's website. 1. Touched by Stephen Lowe. London, Nick Hern Books, 2006. 1. Touched, review by Lyn Gardner of 2008 revival at Salisbury Playhouse, The Guardian, 8 April 2008. 1. ["Drama Production - Touched — Canterbury College, Kent, UK"](https://web.archive.org/web/20110127182328/http://www.cant-col.ac.uk/about-canterbury-college/events/drama-production-touched). *www.cant-col.ac.uk*. Archived from [the original](http://www.cant-col.ac.uk/about-canterbury-college/events/drama-production-touched) on 2011-01-27. 1. [\[1\]](https://web.archive.org/web/20170222202709/https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2017/touched-review-nottingham-playhouse/) 1. ["Review: Stephen Lowe's Touched at Nottingham Playhouse"](https://eastmidlandstheatre.com/2017/02/21/review-stephen-lowes-touched-at-nottingham-playhouse/). 21 February 2017. 1. *Touched* by Stephen Lowe - Methuen 1981, p29. 1. Author's Note in *Touched* by Stephen Lowe, [Methuen](/source/Methuen_Publishing) 1981, p2. 1. Lyn Gardner, 2008 revival (see above, ref. 5) 1. Touched webpage on www.nickhernbooks.co.uk ## External links - [Touched, review by Lyn Gardner of 2008 revival at Salisbury Playhouse, The Guardian, 8 April 2008](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2008/apr/08/theatre?INTCMP=SRCH/) - [Archived page on Royal Court website. Look Back: 50 readings, 50 writers, 50 plays](http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/look-back-50-readings-50-writers-50-years/) - [Touched webpage, Nick Hern Books website](http://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/index.cfm?nid=authors&AuthorID=893&alphabet=&isbn=1854599259/) - [Stephen Lowe's website](https://web.archive.org/web/20120204122317/http://www.stephenlowe.co.uk/) --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Touched (play)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touched_(play)) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touched_(play)?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.