Review at a glance

Although this debut play by actress Nancy Farino about a father-daughter road trip is confused and uneven I can see why Hampstead backed it. There’s real style and promise in the writing which kept me attentive. And it takes a certain audacity to stage a play partly on a moving bus that (spoiler alert) gets its roof ripped off by a low bridge. Those expecting a story about Nazi Germany, like the Robert Harris novel of the same name, should know that the territory of Fatherland is closer to the sitcom Motherland – a place of failed parenting.

Farino herself plays the ironically-named Joy, a troubled 26-year-old nursery assistant, whose eccentric, exasperating father Winston Smith (Jason Thorpe) turns up at her door one day with an old school bus he’s bought. Having

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