Faith, food and love are central to Meghan Kennedy’s Italian-American drama set in New York and given its British premiere at London’s Park Theatre

On 16 December 1960, planes descending into two New York airports – LaGuardia and Idlewild, which a few years later would be renamed JFK, after the assassinated thirty-fifth United States President – collided in mid air, killing 128 passengers and six people on the ground. One plane landed in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, levelling structures including a church.

“My mother grew up just a few blocks away from where the plane crashed,” says playwright Meghan Kennedy. “And I grew up hearing stories about it. My mother even spoke of her life in terms of before the crash and after the crash. Even though they weren’t directly affected by it, I think it shook something in their family dynamic.”

What became known as the Park Slope Crash is the pivotal event in Kennedy’s play Napoli, Brooklyn, which has just opened at the Park Theatre in north London in its UK premiere production.