Eugenia Fragos as Fran – image by Shane Reid
By Peter Maddern
Geordie Brookman’s approach in 2014 to Andrew Bovell for a new play has proven to be inspired. Coming off The Secret River and previously When The Rain Stops Falling (along with his screen play A Man Most Wanted), Bovell is quite Australia’s leading play write and this, Things I Know To Be True, will only sustain his star in the ascendancy.
Notwithstanding, its composition for the audience is somewhat curious. As for its plot the program speaks only of it being ‘a warm, funny and ultimately tragic family drama about growing up, moving on and what’s left behind’ and that is buried at the base of Bovell’s own notes.
Yet, by its conclusion that suffices as Bob (Paul Blackwell) and Fran (Eugenia Fragos), working class parents, deal with the issues of their four children and of themselves. Poignantly set at Halletts Cove south of Adelaide it reflects as much the unique and somewhat grim circumstances of this town as it does on how much their children are of another era they can barely define let alone comprehend – upwardly mobile and unbounded by the mores of their parents as to relationships and, well, most things.
Its own moral is as hard to decipher as the forewarning of its narrative was to find but ‘even within families fate, like time and tide wait for no man’ is one place to start.
Eugenia Fragos is absorbing and compelling as the know all, calculating mother – our care for her diminishing as the play develops in proportion to how our respect and empathy grows for husband Bob with Blackwell in his usual fine form. Of the ‘children’, Georgia Adamson’s Pip and Tilda Cobham-Hervey’s Rosie delight as siblings of both purpose and devotion yet flawed by those strengths.
Things I Know to be True also at times has the feel of a movie, incorporating Nils Frahm’s music and co-director Scott Graham’s passion for dance and movement. His presence also acts as a welcome restraint on Geordie Brookman’s panache for the absurd ensuring the players develop their characters and relationships with the audience without the noise of cheap laughs.
Geoff Cobham’s lighting, notably an array of hanging filament globes, sets off Thom Buchanan’s inspired backdrop making all in attendance feel very at home.
This is fine new theatre and the best of that kind that the Brookmans have brought to the State Theatre since their arrival three years back.
Kryztoff Rating 4K
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