Tom Wentworth

Windy Old Fossils Tom Wentworth

A one act play

Elderly siblings, Ted and Lizzie, huddle in their Shropshire cottage with nothing but the winter wind for company. As the weather gets colder, their electricity keeps blacking out and they begin to go to desperate and often humorous lengths to keep warm. Windy Old Fossils is a black comedy about age, energy and isolation.



Tom's a generous writer. In Windy Old Fossils he gives the actors lines they can ring every drop of comedy and tragedy from. He gives the creative team images and suggestions that can be interpreted literally and theatrically as they wish. And he gives the audience an intriguing and accessible story that delivers what it promises, and much more.

Elizabeth Freestone Director

When I think about this play I think about a landscape so open that it feels like the fields, hills and trees are more a wide ocean than land. And these two people are lost within that.

Their little house, like a life raft floating in a sea of green and brown.

A raft that's unfairly falling to pieces.

And Lizzie and Ted cling on, as they drift through memory and isolation with humour and sadness.

It's a play about the countryside and being forgotten within that landscape.

And we need stories like this to remind us all how easily that can happen. And how unfair it is.

Simon Longman