The Arbor (2010) User Reviews

Amazing and Innovative

[greasyfilms · 7/10 · 25 June 2012]

By using actors who are lip-syncing interviews of actual people in Andrea Dunbar's life, this film pushes the documentary genre completely into the dramatic cinema field, with very interesting and moving results. Mix in stagings of her plays in the actual British housing projects where they were set, and vintage TV footage, you get a fascinating very creative mix.

It's also a very enlightening portrait of a woman who used art and the written word to pull herself out of the slums, but failed to change as a human being, basically living the life of the housing project trash that she wrote about, abusing her children as a result.

A fresh and very cinematic take on the documentary form. Check it out.

Bold, unconventional and emotional till the very end

[MarcusJ13 · 8/10 · 13 June 2011]

Contains mild spoilers

The Arbor tells the story of the late playwright Andrea Dunbar and her story up until her early death at 29. The film plays in a documentary format with recreations of her play The Arbor in between and it is in here that we really get a sense of just how autobiographical the play is. It is made well enough that we do not think it is interchanging quickly between these scenes that were difficult to watch further into the film given the continued context being made. Even halfway into the film I felt connected with it and didn't feel too rushed given the quite short run time. The rest of the film revolved around interviews with the people in her life, revolving round her family and portions of people on the estate. Even though actors were used on film they are actually lip syncing actual words spoken, a clever technique as it allowed them to open up more and made those words powerful. However it should not be expected that the film is all about Dunbar and does shift focus onto her children especially her daughter Lorraine who went through a traumatic time as a mixed race person growing up in a racially intolerant estate. Her story becomes just as relevant as Andrea's the more you hear about it. I was actually at a Q&A session with director Clio Barnard and this was highly intentional. The film was shot cleverly without being in a conventional documentary format with characters talking directly to camera. Real eye contact is made with the audience in this respect resonating even though it is played by actors.

In summary though this film is a difficult watch and I've only really scratched the surface in terms of what the film portrays. Really do check it out as it is a really moving story that stays in the mind greatly afterwards.

Interesting experiment

[valleyjohn · 6/10 · 16 June 2011]

The Arbor is a very interesting movie . Unique in the way it is filmed , with actors lip sinking the words of real people who are being interviewed about the life of playwright , Andrea Dunbar.

The only work that i have seen of Andrea Dunbar is ' Rita , Sue and Bob too ' a bawdy drama from the 80's. I had no idea the writer if this film lead such a tragic life and that her children suffered so badly too.

While i admire the way this film is made and the obvious skill of the actors and director , i'm still not sure this film totally works. I struggled at times to stay with this movie and i feel it would have benefited from being half an hour shorter.

The Arbor is an experiment that has too much going on for my liking but well done to Clio Barnard for attempting such an ambitious project.

Documentary and realism seamlessly blend in the portrait of a working-class playwright

[Chris Knipp · 9/10 · 17 April 2011]

Location shots, real people, and actors are deployed in a seamless amalgam in this recollection of of the talented but short-lived alcoholic working-class playwright Andrea Dunbar, from Bradford, West Yorkshire. Filmmaker Clio Barnard first spent two years recording interviews with Dunbar's family and friends,. Then she staged actors lip-synching the interviews as monologues, sometimes in a group scene -- a technique known as "verbatim theater" that arguably works more seamlessly because of Bernard's use of filmed settings. Barnard also staged parts of one of Dunbar's plays out near "The Arbor," ther part of the Yorkshire housing estate where Dunbar grew up and of which her plays speak. This is also the name of Dunbar's first play. Another one, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, was made into a reportedly excellent film. After a while, thanks in part to the excellent editing of Ole Birekland, you don't know who's the real person and who's an actor (because vintage footage of the people is there too). This creates a kind of Brechtian "Alienation Effect" that paradoxically makes it all more real and memorable. In the course of compensating mentally for shifts of format and perspective, you wind up projecting yourself into Andrea Dunbar's world.

It's a tough trip. Dunbar grew up in the Butterfield Estates during the decline of the textile mills, writing her first play at fifteen. She was already experiencing the prevailing racism, alcoholism and domestic violence. Eventually, by the time she died at 29 of a cerebral hemorrhage, she'd had become a heavy drinker and had three children by three different fathers. The eldest, Lorraine, played here by the sad- eyed, insinuating Manjinder Virk, was a dark-skinned, pretty girl whose dad was of Pakistani origin. She was to write no plays, but otherwise would duplicate her mother's unfortunate model of children by different fathers, drug addiction instead of alcoholism, and imprisonment for the causing the death of her child by extreme negligence.

Editing is a key factor here, but all elements are so smoothly handled you become unaware of the many layers and modes at work. Over-titles identifying the main speakers when the first appear also help to create the desired confusion. In news footage where the family is interviewed after Andrea's first London success, her real dad bears a quite striking resemblance to the father in the staged play. At the play, many people, presumably current residents of the estates, stand around to watch -- another way boundaries are broken. Ronnie Schieb calls this "a must-see entry in the ongoing evolution of cinematic formalism," but this "formally inventive" and "socially revelatory" exploration, neither formal nor abstract in the playing out, never seems anything but real, down to the sometimes almost impenetrable accents of the recorded speakers whose voices flow through the scenes. Very good foreground and ambient sound contributes to the seamless effect, of course. Credit here to Dolby Digital sound designer Tim Barker and re-recording mixer Richard Davey.

There is a Rashomon-like aspect as one gradually watches Andreas's story unfold from multiple sources, including the various fathers of her children, and the most personal moments come with Lorraine's unfolding confessions. As Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote about the film last spring, Barnard's "technique produces a hyperreal intensification of the pain in Dunbar's work and in her life," and this pain becomes most vivid as we realize that in Lorraine's life Andrea's tragedy "was replicated, almost genetically." Bradshaw makes another good point: Dunbar's story, and her success as a teenage playwright in Max Stafford-Clark's Royal Court, challenges a lot of what we assume about gritty realist theatre or literature from the tough north," because the plays are usually produced "by men whose gender privileges are reinforced by university." They become stories of how they got out. But Dunbar never got out.

The Arbor, Barnard's debut feature, got a raft of nominations at BAFTA and the London Critics Circle, and two actual awards, one at Sheffield's documentary festival (Innovation Award) and the British Independent Film award for Best Achievement in Production. It's not a cheerful watch, but it's a very compelling one and a remarkable accomplishment by Clio Bernard -- as well as by the principal actors, Manjinder Virk, Christine Bottomley, Neil Dudgeon, Monica Dolan, Danny Webb, Kathryn Pogson, Natalie Gavin, Jonathan Haynes, Jimi Mistry, George Costigan. Try as you may, you will not spot their lips out of sync.

The 94-minute The Arbor won Barnard a best new documentary filmmaker prize at 2010's year's Tribeca Film Festival. It will get a theatrical U.S. release by Strand in April 2011. Seen and reviewed as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival, April 2011.

Powerful

[facebook-943-890851 · 10/10 · 18 January 2011]

I loved everything about this sad film.

The technique of post syncing shouldn't have worked, nor the acting of the play on the streets either, but they really do.

The pacing of the original interviews is very interesting,very steady. There is something marvellous about the way the accents are subtly yet profoundly different from those that actors generally impose, and knowing that these voices are those of the actual people was very moving.

Seeing the real people in what would normally have been flashback but in this case is views into a previous documentary really worked.

This is a very powerful story of a tragedy with very little joy. When I see Rita, Sue and Bob Too again, one of my favourite films and one that puts most other working class depictions into a cocked hat, I wonder what my mood will be.

Brutally engaging, creative and moving blend of documentary and drama

[bob the moo · 23 October 2011]

I came to this film thinking that it was a documentary about the young writer Andrea Dunbar, who wrote the play (then film) Rita, Sue and Bob Too as well as a couple of other works before dying very young. I wasn't sure why I should be interested in her or her work but I had heard good things about the film (and had also seen Clio Barnard's previous short films) so I decided to give it a go. What I found was a film that wasn't really about Andrea Dunbar so much as it was the life of her mixed race daughter Lorraine.

In telling this story the film not only tells us about Lorraine's life but also gives us the context by filling in who her mother was (mainly from old BBC documentaries that Lorraine watches) but also shows us what the estate is like by enacting parts of her play on the estate. It is a very creative approach and the blend of documentary and drama compliments each other since the original play was so real as to be a documentary and the real story of their lives is so engaging that it could have been a scripted drama. The film captures this really well and the various sections and threads just fit perfectly together – you are being told about different people in different ways but it never feels like anything other than one story.

I didn't know any of this story so for me it really did impact to hear about the damaged lives coming out of this world (a world shown to us through the play). Assuming others do not know either, I will say no more on the content but it is brutal and saddening but rewarding thanks to how it is told. Much like her short films, Barnard approaches this as a documentary of real people telling stories but where in her shorts I think she hurt the films by having overly distracting images and cutaways as part of her design, here her visual content does nothing but add to the telling. Her "visuals" are actors lip-synching with the recorded word of the real people. The word "lip-synching" has negative connotations – it means pretending, faking it etc in regards music but here it is a great device. The actors not only hit their marks in regards the words, but they do so in a way where they make the words come alive. Virk is tragically brilliant and makes her character sympathetic without making excuses for her; she holds the attention and brings so much out in face and body. Gavin is great as the "girl" in the play – it is her role to help us understand the Dunbar not shown in the BBC interviews, and she does this really well. Down through the cast everyone delivers and they succeed despite the limits of not only the words they have to say, but the nuances and the timing of those words – the majority of the cast have little freedom to move but yet they deliver great performances.

Barnard was showered with praise for this film and rightly so. It is engaging in its telling of this brutal and fascinating family story and it is done with creativity. The blend of documentary and drama is really well done whether it is in the grand scheme of things or even in the smaller detail such as setting the play sections on the estate with people watching in the background. It is not a cheerful film but yet it is a very good one and it is very much worth seeing. I've had issues with some of Barnard's work before, but with this I have almost no reservations about it.

Powerful, with an innovative approach that adds to the power. (Some details, but not really spoilers)

[tony-mastrogiorgio · 10/10 · 25 April 2020]

The film begins with text explaining that you will hear the recorded words of the people depicted, but you will see actors lip syncing them. Your first reaction may be: why?

The answer is in the watching. Done as a traditional documentary, The Arbor would be powerful. Andrea Dunbar grow up in horrible circumstances on a housing estate in Braford, England, Remarkably, she wrote a play as a teenage, followed by a second play and a film script, capturing her life, with traces of humor. Unfortunately she was an alcoholic, had three children by three different fathers, and died of an embolism, in the words of one of her daughters, "at home" - the local pub.

The film follows the lives of her children, especially Lorraine, a half-Pakistani child who manages to recreate all the horror of life she was born into, and then some.

The lip syncing technique allows the film to put the testimony in different context, some times in the places where the events occurred (or similar enough) and sometimes in an invented space that adds power to them. For example, after Lorraine reads a speech a character based on her made in a play about her mother's life, we see her other family members sitting scattered across an empty theater, giving their reactions (from support, to anger, to questioning). The approach places them together in a way a straightforward documentary would not. It also allows the film to place characters within the visual consequence of their actions.

I'm not doing it justice. The material is liberated, amplified, made more real through the innovative technique. Highly recommend this unique fascinating film. Also recommend you keep tissues around...

Gritty... But good...

[ajs-10 · 8/10 · 7 June 2011]

'The Arbor' of the title refers to a street called the 'Brafferton Arbor' on the Buttershaw estate in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. The people who lived there back in the 1980's were not rich, but one of them, Andrea Dunbar, became well known as a playwright. A lot of her work was biographical and this film tells us about her and about her oldest daughter, Lorraine, both through her work and by the use of actors lip-syncing to the voices of her friends and family.

It is no secret that Andrea Dunbar died quite young, but she did have two plays open in London and one of them was made into a film in 1987. This was, of course, Rita, Sue and Bob Too!. If you haven't seen it and you're interested in this documentary, it's one I can recommend. But back to 'The Arbor', it is a very touching film at times, it can be quite dark too, but over all the people speaking are very realistic about life, the universe and everything. I found it quite compelling viewing, partly because I work in the city of Bradford and it's quite sad to think these things are still going on today (particularly around the area where I work). I guess if you're up for a gritty realistic tale of northern folk then I can highly recommend it.

Just as a footnote, there's a piece of archive footage of Andrea getting on a train near the end of the film. She is getting the train at my local railway station… A small claim to fame for the town I frequent.

My Score: 7.7/10

Life and Death in The Arbor

[NoDakTatum · 10/10 · 12 October 2023]

British film maker Clio Barnard takes what could have been a gimmicky film making stunt, and turns it into a stunning documentary that shakes the viewer. Andrea Dunbar was an English teenager who penned a play entitled "The Arbor," about life in the British equivalent of American housing projects. Her play mirrored her own existence, and she was quickly vaulted into theatre literati. She had two children by the time she was out of her teen years, had another child while young- all three were by different fathers, and Andrea died five days before Christmas in 1990 of a brain hemorrhage in a pub at the age of 29. Her children, still growing up in the housing area, are scattered to extended family members and foster homes. The oldest daughter, Lorraine, is half-Pakistani, and must deal with racism on a daily basis. She then becomes a drug addict and prostitute, and after having a few children of her own (mirroring her mother, who she came to hate), suffers a tragedy that sends her to prison.

This is not your straightforward documentary. What Barnard has done is record audio interviews with the subjects (Andrea Dunbar's children, family, and neighbors), and then has actors and actresses lip synch the lines. It is not as goofy or conceited as it sounds, and I was quickly taken with the idea. Interspersed with these scenes is news and documentary footage of the real Andrea Dunbar talking about her writing and upbringing- she comes off as a very harsh young woman, and another group of actors dramatizing Dunbar's play in the neighborhood where the play is set; the chosen scenes are well-acted but Dunbar's lines sometimes play melodramatically.

I don't know what possessed Barnard to conceive this film, but I am grateful she did. I had no clue who Dunbar was, but what happened to her and her brood is infinitely interesting. This film is not a loving look back through rose-colored glasses, and Dunbar does not come off very well- her child-raising skills were lacking thanks to her alcoholism. The story of her daughter Lorraine is tragic and maddening. Barnard never presents all the facts for the viewer, she entices the events along, giving just enough to make you want to know what happens but without teasing. The structure is incredible. The actors, having to lip synch others' words, do a great job. They must tailor their reactions to another person's voice, literally, and they do this so well you will quickly forget this was "dubbed." This came out in the United Kingdom in 2010, and was released in the United States the following year, and I can say without a doubt "The Arbor" is one of the best documentaries of the new millennium.

Problematic

[ezppl · 3/10 · 10 October 2021]

I was hugely disappointed by this. The description of the film is wrong - it's not really about Andrea Dunbar at all - she only features in the first third of the film. Rather it's about the desperate life of one of her children - a spiral into addiction hell and everything which that entails, all described in graphic detail. I felt very uneasy at the 'poverty porn' aspect of the film - what are we to take from it other than these people are in desperate cycles of violence and addiction and alcoholism, with no redeeming features at all? The lip-synch acting is clever initially but is too strained to last the length of a feature and becomes gimmicky. Andrea Dunbar's story is hugely compelling but the story of the tragedy of her family and focus on her desperate child is not. Made me sad and angry.

An innovative documentary about a Bradford family

[roy-54 · 31 October 2010]

If you've seen Alan Clarke's wonderful 'Rita, Sue and Bob Too!' (UK 1986), you'll have some idea of what to expect from 'The Arbor'. "The Arbor" is a small part of the Buttershaw Estate in South Bradford where Clarke's film was set. Clarke's film was adapted from her own play by Andrea Dunbar, a 20 year-old single mother in 1982 when the play first appeared. She had written her first play also called 'The Arbour' when she was still at school and a third, 'Shirley', in 1986 before she died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage aged just 29.

Knowledge of 'Rita, Sue and Bob Too!' will only help a little, however. This film, 'The Arbour', is part inspired by but is not an adaptation of Dunbar's play. Instead it is a form of documentary about Dunbar and her personal legacy that turns out to be mainly about the equally difficult life of her first child, Lorraine.

The film is written and directed by Clio Barnard who has Bradford connections. She visited the Buttershaw estate in 2009 and interviewed members of the extended Dunbar family and some other residents. She then borrowed the idea of hiring actors to lip-synch the recorded interviews (in A State Affair, a play by Robin Soans about the Buttershaw estate, actors spoke the words of the people Dunbar knew). Scenes with the actors were shot on the estate and in a London studio. They were edited together with two other kinds of material – scenes from 'Rita, Sue . . .' and from arts and news programmes about Andrea Dunbar plus scenes from 'The Arbor' play, acted out on the 'green' on the estate.

So, what does it all mean? I'm honestly not sure. Technically it is very well put together. I found myself moved by several scenes. At other times I felt like I didn't want to watch. I think that my personal preference is for a social-realist drama, but I recognise that the approach here is very powerful. My only real problem was in the casting of George Costigan as one of the actors reading the words of one of the fathers of Andrea Dunbar's children. Costigan was 'Bob' in Rita, Sue . . . and I found this an intertextual step too far.

Clio Barnard has, I think, previously produced video installations and sometimes I felt that I was viewing an installation. I found the initial stages confusing as they moved backwards and forwards in time, but eventually the film developed a distinctive narrative line focusing on Lorraine and this made it more like a traditional documentary film.

The Arbor appears to be attracting audiences to the National Media Museum's cinemas. Bradford audiences will probably have a rather different take on the film than the London critics who celebrated its success in winning two prizes at the London Film Festival this week.

Bold

[safenoe · 8/10 · 19 July 2022]

Whilst I haven't seen Rita, Sue and Bob Too (apart from YouTube clips), I was intrigued by The Arbor and the portrayal of playwright Andrea Dunbar who sadly died at the age of 29. The documentary style is something to behold, filmed amidst the council flats where Andrea grew up.

I don't get it

[yellowcow8 · 4/10 · 12 September 2012]

I go into movies with no expectations...also I had no clue who was Andrea Dunbar so that really didn't help. I felt like I just wasted an hour and half watching this film. Nearly all positive reviews comment on how creative Clio Barnard is with the verbatim theater, AKA "lip synching". Sure, it's interesting for a few minutes but the novelty wore off...it would have achieved the same results if they used the original footage of interviews. Perhaps the techniques were too artsy for me.

This "docudrama" focused on Andrea then transitioned to Lorraine...both figures are equally tragic but it makes me sad how irresponsible people are, especially with children involved. Neither women are fit to be mothers...it's like an extended episode of a bad reality TV show where the cameras follow people who are trainwrecks. Yes, I realize alcohol and drug addictions consume lives but they have no one to blame but themselves. It's hard to pull for any of the characters.

The story itself is very slow moving. The only bright moment was Lorraine dancing on top of her dad's car...it was a sweet moment of innocence. The film would have been better served if it's half an hour shorter and played on PBS.

Something quite different

[didi-5 · 24 December 2011]

Andrea Dunbar wrote two plays before she died tragically young at the age of 29 - 'The Arbor', of which we see snatches and scenes here, and 'Rita, Sue and Bob, Too', which was made into a well-regarded film.

This drama-documentary is rather different to the usual type because not only does it use real interview and actual footage of Dunbar from her TV appearances, but uses real interviews with her family and friends which are then lip-synched (very well) by professional actors. This sounds like a gimmick, but we very quickly forget we are not watching the real people talking about their lives - when we do get jolted out of this by associations with other work (George Costigan 'plays' Dunbar's partner but also of course was 'Bob' in the aforementioned film), it still somehow works.

Dunbar's story was a tragic one, one of wasted talent and a toxic life, to some degree, although her children - mixed-race Lorraine and Lisa - have very different stories about their childhood and the impact their mother had on them. Lorraine's story is just as tragic in its way, and we follow that following the description of Andrea Dunbar's death.

A new and dynamic way of presenting real people's issues and problems, 'The Arbor' is very possibly something Dunbar could have created herself had she lived. As it is, it stands as an interesting memorial to her talent.

A unique, brave piece of documentary and docu-drama film making.

[runamokprods · 18 October 2011]

It tells the life story of UK playwright Andrea Dunbar, who s was discovered at a very young age in the British housing projects known as 'The Arbor' where she wrote about the alcoholism and family decay she watched around her.

The film uses two extraordinary devices, both of which I found off-putting at first, but had great impact by the end.

First, scenes from Dunbar's plays are staged in the open lawn areas of the real life Arbor, so we see a fight taking place in a living room at night acted out on the grass in broad daylight (with a couch and other living room props sitting there surreally, watched by – presumably – the neighborhood people still struggling under the same conditions. At first this just seemed distracting, but over time, it helped bring home that Dunbar's works represented real people, real lives, real pain.

The second, even odder and more audacious move, is to have all the interviews with the real participants acted out by professional actors lip-syncing to the recorded words of the real people. Again, the was distracting for the first while, but eventually it lead to the film feeling simultaneously dreamy and like a memory, and in some way more 'real' than if the actors simply used their own voices.

A very moving film that doesn't always work, but his heroic enough in it's bravery that it more than overcomes the occasional missed step.

The Arbor :Too Real and Insightful to Ignore.

[MrJamesBlack · 16 June 2011]

Andrea Dunbar was something of a child prodigy growing up on the underprivileged Buttershaw Estate in Bradford. Dunbar wrote her first play The Arbor, (named after the street on which she lived Brafferton Arbor,) at the tender age of 15. The play, which debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in 1980, depicts the turbulent life of pregnant teenager with a father who is an abusive alcoholic. In 1982 Dunbar wrote the follow up Rita, Sue and Bob Too! which was later turned into a film by the director Alan Clarke. By 1990, at just 29 years old, Andrea Dunbar was dead, killed by an apparent brain haemorrhage the talented author left behind three young children. Artist and filmmaker Clio Barnard's new biopic, also entitled The Arbor, attempts not only to tell Andrea's story but also that of her eldest daughter Lorraine, who was imprisoned in 2007 for the manslaughter of her son Harris.

A drama/documentary in the truest, and perhaps newest, sense of the phrase The Arbor utilizes archive footage culled from television documentaries such as Arena and Look North, an original technique where actors lip-sync to the voices of the real life participants in Dunbar's troubled life and impromptu performances of the author's work taking place on the Buttershaw Estate. Theoretically speaking this multi-layered approach sounds as if it might be somewhat confusing and imprecise in practice however it is a revelation being both innovative and inspiring. With a shifting timeframe and multiple story telling techniques the resulting film not only offers a detailed insight into the lives of Andrea Dunbar and her daughter Lorraine but also into that whole section society recently dubbed 'Broken Britain.' The film begins in the present day with Dunbar's two daughters Lorraine (Manjinder Virk) and Lisa (Christine Bottomley) telling of their childhood and formative years. These scenes, in which the actors address the camera and lip-sync their speech to actual voices of the people they are portraying are carried off with remarkable accuracy and have a haunting quality to them. It is as if the actors are channelling those involved from another time and place with a story yet to be told. The voices of the interviewees are filled with regret rather than anger at wasted opportunities and what might have been, there is also a great deal of understanding at the circumstances and pressures each of them have faced in the past.

Life has been particularly difficult for eldest daughter Lorraine growing up as a mixed-race child a predominately white estate she was racially abused on a daily basis for having a Pakistani father. Just 10 years old when her mother passed away Lorraine would later turn to prostitution to feed her drug habit. As her life quickly spiralled out of control she fell pregnant by one of her clients and struggled to bring up her child.

The documentary footage of Andrea Dunbar shows the author at home on the Buttershaw Estate where she continued to live until her untimely death. The semi-biographical nature of Dunbar's writing is obvious in the remarkable similarity between her own family and the characters of her creation. Given the present day world of celebrity these scenes, (in which fame appears to have been foisted upon an unassuming talent,) are reminiscent of the countless reality TV stars that are ill-prepared for the spotlight.

The scenes in which parts of Dunbar's plays that are acted out on the estate are excellent giving off the urgency and realism of the writing. As the current residents loiter in the background Natalie Gavin who plays the young Andrea enthusiastically explains her work to the camera before launching into another energetic performance.

At the conclusion of The Arbor Lorraine, who has now released from prison after serving 3 years for the manslaughter of her son, tells us that her life reflects many inhabitants of the Buttershaw Estate. Where once the social problems were those of unemployment, poverty and alcoholism the estate has deteriorated further becoming a ghetto of drug dealing, crime and disorder. Lorraine tells us that if her mother were to write Rita Sue and Bob Too! in the present day, "Rita and Sue would be smackheads." The lasting influence of Andrea Dunbar's writing can be found in modern British film and television not least in the television drama Shameless which depicts life on the Chatsworth Estate with a similar combination of bawdy humour and satirical knowingness. The Arbor's unusual but innovative approach to drama/documentary uncovers, like Dunbar's plays, the hardship and problems which lie at the heart of working-class Britain, (albeit in a completely different manner.) Exploring the life of a significant contributor to British working-class fiction The Arbor like Andrea Dunbar herself is too authentic and insightful to ignore.