Andrew Bovell’s latest offering, ‘Things I Know To Be True’, will probably break your heart.
Presented by the State Theatre Company, this season highlight delves into the intertwined lives within a seemingly ordinary South Australian family. As the seasons change against the backdrop of father Bob Price’s carefully-tended rose garden, so to do the members of his family. The audience is invited to closer examine each of the Prices, one by one, while the widening cracks in this slice of suburban comfort are exposed.
Bovell’s characters are complex and achingly real. Paul Blackwell’s depiction of bumbling, fatherly calm is the antithesis of Eugenia Fragos’ fierce maternal instinct – characteristics which are inversed in moments of fragility. The central plot begins with and weaves around self-discovering teenage daughter Rosie – portrayed touchingly by rising young Adelaide star Tilda Cobham-Hervey – who shines as a beacon of hope as the drama grows darker. While her mother, father and siblings wage the wars of a learning and evolving family around her, Rosie watches on with a delicate contrast of wisdom and naivety.
The play’s action has its roots in hope and nostalgia, but it teeters on the edge of intensity. It draws the audience back into safety over and over again with a warm and self-deprecating sense of humour. And when this humour grows less effective against the murky world unravelling on the stage, snatches of beautifully choreographed physical theatre remind us this is fiction. But barely. There are close to 90 minutes of almost-safety. And then the audience is plunged headlong into the intensity it’s been so tenuously protected from – much like the way that family so often shields us against the reality of the world.
With moving performances by a stellar cast, ‘Things I Know To Be True’ explores a family’s love, loss and grief with tenderness and honesty. It will make you laugh, and it will most likely make you cry. But more than anything, it will make you want to return to your childhood home and hug your parents like you’ve never hugged them before.
★★★★1/2
'Things I Know To Be True' performs Adelaide Festival Centre until 4 June.
