Saturday March 30, 2024
TRIBES
Review

TRIBES

June 14 2016

TRIBES, Ensemble Theatre, 26 May-2 July 2016. Photography by Clare Hawley: above - Ana Maria Belo and Genevieve Lemon; right: Garth Holcombe and Luke Watts (foreground)

Nina Raine’s 2010 play has been rewarded and awarded in London and New York as “outstanding” and “best new play” – and no wonder. On one level, it’s a deceptively straightforward story of a middle class family’s daily ructions. On another it has much, much more to say and it could be anywhere – Hampstead, Manhattan or Woollahra – and in this instance, it’s landed in Kirribilli.

Most of us would agree that the dynamics of family life are all about (mis)communication, and this is even more starkly obvious when the family in question uses words as weapons. And even more obvious when one family member can’t join in because he’s deaf.

Billy (Luke Watts) has been deaf all his life. His loving family long ago decided (or his father did at any rate) that he should not be treated as handicapped but would learn to lip read and speak and no one would have a bar of sign language. Christopher (Sean O’Shea) and Beth (Genevieve Lemon) verbally spar with each other and anyone else within reach; their other two children fight back as best they can.

Eldest son Daniel (Garth Holcombe) is almost as sardonic as his father but is hampered by a sense of failure (real – he could get a job at Black Books if it were not too much effort). His relationship has broken down, he’s smoking way too much dope and he’s beginning to hear voices, even through his depression.

Middle child Ruth (Amber McMahon) wants to be an opera singer but her ear isn’t good enough to catch that she doesn’t have the voice: she is actually verging on untalented. 

On the periphery sits Billy while the arguments, witticisms, sarcasm, barbs, slings and arrows and outrageous fortune clatter about him. Until he meets Sylvia (Ana Maria Belo), that is. Sylvia is going deaf but has learned to sign, fluently, and through her he glimpses another world – another tribe.

As the play progresses – mainly around the long table where food and argument are dished out in equal measure – the playwright slyly introduces all manner of methods of communication. And she plays with the ideas of how we do and don’t and also how we barely realise what we’re doing, half the time.

TRIBES

Christopher is mainly oblivious to any other opinion but his own and can’t – or won’t – understand Billy’s sudden interest in sign language. It is genuinely comical and heartbreaking that in the interim, Christopher is wedded to his laptop and headphones...learning Chinese. Sean O’Shea is at once acerbic and laconic – and funny.

Genevieve Lemon probably bleeds nuanced comedy if she cuts her finger and as the weary mother/wife and would-be novelist, her own inability to communicate is extremely droll. She’s an easy and magnetic stage presence – the heart of the production with O’Shea.

Garth Holcombe and Amber McMahon are also handed some fine comedy and make much laughter with it. No one can hear Daniel’s inner voices, he can’t hear anyone else, and Ruth, of course, can’t hear her sharps and flats to save herself. It’s both poignant and a guilty pleasure.

It’s also a shock – and can only bring you up short as a hearing person – when hitherto charming Billy discards his hearing aids and demands they all speak with him in sign language. He will not talk to them again until they make the effort to speak to him in his language. Luke Watts carries his transition from boy to man and dignity with elegance.

The catalyst for Billy’s change and growth is Sylvia and, as played by Ana Maria Belo, this woman is a compelling and frequently startling figure. Over the time frame of the play Belo moves from being a person who can still hear to one who is losing that ability. Her voice gradually displays the subtle differences and the result is unnerving and moving. There but for the grace, etc etc. 

Directed with verve and clear understanding by Susanna Dowling, on an elegant set (Rita Carmody, lighting Benjamin Brockman), Tribes is a comedy with heart and brain and very well worth the attention it demands. Recommended.

 

 

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