 Find Me by Olwen Wymark is a harrowing and deeply affecting true story, charting the life of Verity an intelligent yet troubled teenage girl whose mental health crisis leads to institutionalisation and, eventually, incarceration in Broadmoor. At the time, her release could only be authorised by the Home Secretary, underscoring the rigid, often inhumane systems that governed mental health treatment in the UK.
First staged in 1977, Find Me was groundbreaking for its unflinching portrayal of mental illness and the failures of the institutions designed to help. The Parker & Snell Theatre Company honours that legacy, delivering a production that is both raw and uncompromising in its honesty. The play interrogates the devastating toll that untreated mental illness takes not only on the individual, but on their family, whose lives are consumed by endless, repetitive processes, bureaucratic roadblocks, and the crushing sense of being unheard by the very systems they turn to for help. These complexities are not the product of mental illness alone, but of a care system so convoluted and unresponsive that it compounds the harm it is meant to alleviate. Wymark’s writing captures both the fragility and resilience of the nuclear family, and Parker & Snell’s wonderful young cast bring Verity’s fracturing family world into painful, vivid focus. The result is an urgent and necessary reminder of how much still needs to change. Lee Hutchison 4/5 Find Me By Olwen Wymark Venue: Space 1 at theSpace on the Mile Dates: August 5-9th Time: 1135 Tickets: Find Me by Olwen Wymark | Edinburgh Festival Fringe |
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