Tuesday March 19, 2024
THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE
Review

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE

May 19 2016

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE, presented by State Theatre Company of SA, Frantic Assembly & Australian Gas Networks in association with Adelaide Festival Centre at the Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide to 4 June 2016; Canberra June 8-11; and UK tour later in the year. Photography by Shane Reid. 

At least one result of the co-production between the State Theatre Company and the UK’s Frantic Assembly is obvious within minutes of this play’s opening. The latter’s Scott Graham is co-director of Andrew Bovell's new work and has the actors launching into choreographed ensemble movement sequences as they speak. It’s a means of signalling “other” states – of mind and being. It’s unexpected and effective and is repeated just often enough throughout to make its point as motif rather than gimmick.

For his part, STCSA’s Geordie Brookman grounds the production with clear and concise choices that fill the vast and mostly empty and dimly-lit stage with richly human characters – even though the company numbers just six. Paul Blackwell and Tilda Cobham-Hervey, in particular, beautifully realise the father and daughter, Bob and Rosie, at the heart of the Price family of Hallett Cove. (Mention of this southern seaside suburb of Adelaide provoked titters in the audience at the Dunstan Playhouse – intriguing for non-locals.)

Things I Know To Be True opens with the classic opposite as Rosie – brimming with the youthful confidence of knowing nothing – has her heart and wallet broken while on a gap year adventure in Europe. She returns home with her tail between her legs, but a bit wiser, to find her family and their apparently ordinary lives are not what she knew to be true at all.

Andrew Bovell has an uncanny knack for (and interest in) the dark side of sunny suburbia and those that inhabit it. It’s provocative and fascinating because it reminds us how very peculiar, unexpected and un-ordinary the everyday stories really are. In this play a hint lies in the iceberg roses lovingly planted and tended by Bob. They grow and flourish and go some way to filling the void left by his forced retirement from 35 years in a car factory. Much time passes before it’s revealed that his wife Fran (Eugenia Fragos) loathes the flowers and always has. 

Meanwhile, the sons of the family are also revealed as unknowns and untruths in their different ways. They and third sibling Pip (Georgia Adamson) are much older than their unplanned afterthought baby sister and so contribute to her unknowing position as the outsider. Mark (Tim Walter) and Ben (Nathan O’Keefe) are not what they seem and the crises their actions and choices precipitate also serve to fracture Pip’s sense of herself in the family.

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE

The play’s sturdy underpinnings of real people and real lives are repeatedly shaken by typically Bovellian unheralded twists and turns, both minor and immense (no spoilers here). Simple sunshine and the quarter acre block are stalked by darker elements, all more or less subtly suggested by Geoff Cobham’s atmospheric yet minimal set and Nils Frahm’s delicious musical score (with sound designer Andrew Howard). 

The major function of the Frantic Assembly tie-in is that the play will be toured in the UK later this year by that company with a British cast. While that may seem to be a pity for the Aussies, it actually highlights the universality of Hallett Cove and the predicaments of its families. It also means the weaker elements can be remedied – Fran is a one-note anger machine throughout while Mark and his feminine side have never been in touch: considerable flaws in the overall scheme of things. Nevertheless, as already said, Tilda Cobham-Hervey is a mesmerising and strong presence and as the play depends on the power of that central role, all is well.

These Things I Know To Be True will surely be staged in Sydney before long: Andrew Bovell is too good to pass up. Meanwhile, you could zip to Canberra in June to catch it before that. Recommended.

NB: performance attended was a preview, but it showed no signs of being under-cooked or under-prepared. 

 

 

Subscribe

Get all the content of the week delivered straight to your inbox!

Register to Comment
Reset your Password
Registration Login
Registration