By Joyce Morgan
THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE
Belvoir Theatre, June 12
★★★★½
Australian suburbia has long been both pilloried and idealised. Dame Edna skewered the 'burbs while, each election, politicians romanticise and gladhand the inhabitants of places they otherwise might bypass.
Playwright Andrew Bovell eschews these extremes. The power of this play is he finds fertile soil in seemingly ordinary lives to create an extraordinary family drama peopled with rich characters and in which home truths emerge from the backyard.
He mines the mundane moments of our lives – roses need pruning and onions peeling – to reflect on the complexities of the most of primary relationships, between parents and siblings.
What if we love our children unequally? What if kids make choices we disapprove of? What are the consequences of sacrificing one’s own desires on the altar of parenthood?
These are timeless questions but played out in the Price family’s Adelaide backyard. The questions are given time and space to linger in this fine production by Belvoir's former artistic director Neil Armfield, making a welcome return to the theatre he co-founded.
Tony Martin and Helen Thomson are as suburban as leafblowers.
Parents Bob and Fran Price are as suburban as leaf blowers. Easygoing Bob is a retrenched car worker who now tends his roses. He’s wanted nothing more than to see his kids grow up into better versions of himself.
Wife Fran is a nurse. Combative and frank, she knows her kids so well they barely need open their mouths before she’s figured out what’s going on with them.
The couple has battled to give their four adult kids the opportunities they didn’t have.
The play unfolds over four seasons, cleverly evoked in Stephen Curtis’s set with four standard rose bushes. Each season brings into focus one of the Price’s children; and each is facing a crisis. These are not necessarily of a high-stakes nature, but they are relatable.
Rosie, the youngest, has returned broken-hearted from a European backpacking trip. High-flying sister Pip is poised to leave her husband and kids, gentle Mark is wrestling with gender identity and flashy Ben is making dodgy financial deals.
Ben might be Fran’s favourite, but she has most in common with Pip – including a fondness for Leonard Cohen’s haunting Famous Blue Raincoat.
The writing is pared-back without an ounce of flab, and with much lightness and humour amid dappled shade. This is well served in Armfield’s direction.
He presents a delightful cameo as the four children appear as younger versions of themselves.
In one of the most moving scenes – and there are many – Armfield creates an unforgettable image of tenderness and compassion as Bob’s children nurse his wounds, cradle him, gently strip and clothe him as if changing a newborn.
It suggests that in time, children eventually become parents to their parents. The completion of a family circle.
Helen Thomson is commanding as the complex matriarch Fran. Funny, confronting and startlingly unforgiving, Thomson makes us care.
Tony Martin’s Bob, who begins as a jolly but limited bloke, reveals deep layers of love and heartbreak.
Miranda Daughtry captivates as Rosie. Vulnerable and naïve initially, the one truth she eventually learns is that everything changes.
No one changes more, at least physically, than brother Mark (Tom Hobbs). His reflection on his father’s response to his chosen course is devastating
Anna Lise Phillips (Pip) impresses as she reads a candid letter to her mother. Matt Levett, in the least sympathetic role of Ben, is a convincing brat whose mother still irons his shirts.
The play stops short of being a feel-good affirmation of family ties. The unexpected final twist leaves much emotional baggage, including a son and daughter unreconciled to their mother.
Life goes on, but as Cohen’s contemporary Joni Mitchell put it in her song playing quietly in the foyer on opening night: you don’t know what you’ve got 'til it’s gone.