The year is eighteen ninety-one. A young mother's beloved husband has died, leaving her with their baby  and almost the entire artistic output of her prolific but mad brother-in-law who has committed suicide.

 

Part biography, part fantasy, Beyond Earthly Bonds visits Johanna Van Gogh Bonger when, as a single mother, heartbroken and overwhelmed, she is responsible for over two hundred art works she hardly understands and few people have any interest in, to say nothing of over seven hundred letters that will one day need translating.
 

The play explores the journey from incredulity to the self-belief that art really can change the world, and in this case, a woman can put before the world the ouput of one of the most committed and self-determined artists it has ever known.