York Theatre Royal – until Saturday 4th November. Reviewed by Michelle Richardson
5*****
Things I Know to be True is a new Australian play by Andrew Bovell. Following a successful 2016 Australian and UK tour, Frantic Assembly and State Theatre Company South Australia have now embarked on a 2017 tour, which luckily includes York Theatre Royal.
Things I Know to be True tells the story of the Price family, mother, father, plus four grown up children, and their lives over a year. Though it is set in Australia and the characters are Australian, we can all relate to them and the actors all speak with English accents, which seriously doesn’t matter and does not take away from the play at all.
Father Bob (John McArdie) is a retrenched car factory worker, who seems to spend all his time tending his garden, especially the roses. He is married to Fran (Cate Hamer) a senior nurse, who is certainly the matriarchal figure for the whole family. A close knit family that unravels and is slowly destroyed by revelations from each of the children and from Fran herself.
Our introduction to the play is to see a man in the darkness, standing there barefoot, slowly leaning forward. Several voices, taking turns, speak out from within the darkness. The sound, lighting and striking imagery, though quite simple, is mesmerizing and sets the tone for the whole story.
We then cut to another monologue, this time by the youngest daughter Rosie (Kirsty Oswald) who talks about finding love during a solo world trip, a whirlwind romance with THE ONE, before the ultimate betrayal. During this the other actors are at times utilized in movement/dance with Oswald, in such an effect that it was visually stunning and made the piece feel almost poetic.
One by one Pip (Seline Hisli), Mark (Matthew Barker) and Ben (Arthur Wilson) have their own stories and we get to see how the family cope and the dynamics change. After each of these highly emotional and sometime life changing scenes the family seems to recover only to be hit again by the next, to the last devastating scene.
The staging, lighting and sound, though quite simple, was a great success. Just the way the basic set was moved around was incredible, the simple sliding of tables and chairs effortlessly across the stage, with all the cast acting seamlessly as stage hands.
It is a wonderfully written, acted and beautifully choreographed play. The cast of six stood out in their own way, I could honestly not fault any of them. They all seemed to immerse themselves in their characters absolutely completely. It used humour, emotion, anxiety, tension, shock and also beautiful movement and dance.
Exhaustingly fantastic to watch, the audience laughed and cried. I think we could all recognise something from our own lives in this play which is why it struck a chord so well with the audience, I know it certainly resonated with me.
I cannot emphasize this enough, you MUST catch this wonderful, gripping and powerful play.