Two lifetimes of memories and one family car as Chris Dobrowolski takes journey from Mussolini to Elvis

All Roads Lead to Rome is a true, one-man performance about my car. It’s a very ordinary Triumph Herald 1200 estate, bought by my dad, brand new, in 1967. With the passage of time, however, it has become a unique vehicle, both literally and metaphorically.

It was the only time we ever had a new car and dad bought it just after my mum found out she was pregnant with me. The car was passed down to me when I learned to drive and sentimental attachment has made it difficult to part with. Consequently, I have been driving around in the same old endearing but unreliable car ever since. My dad would delight in telling me to never divert from the bus route in it, otherwise I might not get home again. Though it was a quintessentially British car from the 1960s, I found out that it was designed by an Italian (Giovanni Michelotti) in Turin, Italy.

I tried to drive it all the way down to Italy. I had never been before, but my father had. He had been there during World War Two, as part of the Polish division in the Allied army. He experienced a lot, but one of the most historically significant things was near the end of the war. His platoon had been sent to Milan and he just happened to be there to see the grisly spectacle of fascist leader Benito Mussolini’s body on public display. It was hanging upside down from the canopy of an Esso petrol station.

In my mum’s family photo album, there are naturally images of me as child, but quite often you can see the car in the background. There is also a collection of black and white images from dad’s time in World War Two. Black and white photographs often accentuate the otherworldliness of the time and place. I drove the car to Italy to find these places where my dad had been; in a sense, driving it from the cosy family world of colour into this allusive black and white world before cheap cars and rampant consumerism; a world before my dad met my mum. A world I had heard about from my dad in my safe suburban childhood, where he had had a whole series of horrific experiences.

I talk about some of the experiences my dad had, and consequently some of the experiences I had, in relation to those experiences. The show makes huge leaps though late 20th-century history and touches on the Cold War. The idea for the show came out of a chance encounter I had with a woman whose mother had met Elvis Presley. They had tea together when she was working for an American general and he was doing his National Service. It was a very impressive claim to fame, but I made the classic social mistake of trying to match her.

“Well, my dad met Mussolini once.” The gravity of my claim had everyone’s attention, but as I explained the circumstances I remember them all looking embarrassed and slowly moving away from me in a mixture of disbelief and disgust.

So, All Roads Lead to Rome is about a road trip in my temperamental car that touches on misery, Fascism, war, death and lots of funny stories. You can see it at The Old Fire Station on March 20, at 7.30pm.