Words: Francis Wylde 

4 Stars 

“Let there be no fewer of us around this table next year,” Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė recalls her grandmother saying each Christmas. While many of those who once sat around that table are gone, they live on through the stories Dapkūnaitė remembers.

A Pebble in the Road recounts a turbulent century of Lithuanian history through three generations of one family. Dapkūnaitė relates stories passed down by her parents, grandparents, aunts, and great aunts, taking us from Lithuania’s early twentieth-century independence, through Nazi and Soviet occupation, resistance and ultimately the restoration of independence.

Much is recalled through a childlike gaze. Dapkūnaitė’s storytelling has a gentle, almost lullaby-like quality, even as something far more sinister hovers beneath: occupation, persecution, resistance and the violence surrounding Lithuania’s fight for freedom.

Dapkūnaitė is a captivating performer, possessing an extraordinary natural stage presence. With little more than her voice and physicality, she conjures the family apartment in Vilnius and paints vivid, affectionate portraits of the relatives who inhabited it. Her warmth and charm carry the audience effortlessly through their memories.

Yet the production’s gentleness can also limit its dramatic momentum. Its episodic structure occasionally feels more like a collection of cherished memories than a fully driven theatrical narrative, and Dapkūnaitė’s understandable desire to honour each relative sometimes obscures a stronger dramatic through line.

Nevertheless, this is evocative, deeply personal storytelling, and Dapkūnaitė succeeds in making the political intimate, preserving a country’s history through the ordinary people who lived it. 

A Pebble In The Road
Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance Two
13:35
5th August – 31st August 2026 (not 12th, 17th, 24th)