Welcome Return to the Lyric of Things I Know to Be True
This is a welcome return of Andrew Bovill’s terrific play that takes an uncompromising look at the intangible tie that holds a family together, a thing that is stronger than love - you can’t see it, touch it, or taste it, but it's there, even when familial ties are tested to their limits. Even when it looks like thing are falling apart, it still holds.
The family coming under the microscope here are the Prices, a family at a cross roads as parents, Fran and Bob (Cate Hamer and Ewan Stewart) struggle to come to terms with the fact that their children Mark, Pip, Ben and Rosie (Matthew Barker, Seline Hizli, Arthur Wilson and Kirsty Oswald) aren’t turning out like they hoped and planned. This is more or less at the same time that the children are coping with realising that their parents haven’t turned out the way they’d expect either.
It all starts so well, none of the children have moved far from home and are frequent visitors, the two boys having become successful businessmen and daughter Pip, married with a couple of children, but as we learn, nothing is quite as it seems, there are all sorts of things bubbling under the surface waiting to explode.
Baby of the family Rosie does move away for a while, travelling around Europe until after three days of sex with a man she didn't know very well, he absconds with her cash and iPad so she comes cuttling home.
Complex, thoughtful and thought provoking, this script is also infuriating, tender, confusing, sad, funny and very human. It's also very gripping. As things go on, layer after layer is stripped away as parents and children discover the truth about themselves and each other, secrets that have lain hidden away for years bubble to the surface. It's very emotional and when words aren't enough they break into beautifully choreographed slo-mo dance routines, coming together, pulling apart, supporting each other in the air and letting them down gently.
Cate is fabulous as the matriarch clucking around her brood nagging, bullying always anxious, yes she’s infuriating at times but she’s also a sympathetic no less so than when she shouts at her first born, Mark that when she pushed him out of her body, this wasn't what she expected.
She's supported by husband Bob wise, patient, hen pecked and loving with a tendency to retire to his garden when things get too much. They're a terrific couple, standing together when each of the children drop their bombshells, which would test the patience of a saint: even butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth Rosie has her moment, although Bob's over reaction is funnier.
And so they bowl along, until at one point when it seems there's more to keeping them apart than together, something awful happens and of course they're all there for each other once more. Right at the end it seems the children have become the grownups as they help their father get back on his feet, begging the question did he really need them to help him or did they need him to stand up and support them one more time.
There's no easy answer, just remember to take a big hankie, it's a weepie.
Unmissable.
Things I Know to Be True, a A Frantic Assembly and State Theatre Company South Australia production, continues at the Lyric till 3 February, from Monday till Saturday at 7.30pm, with matinees on Saturdays at 2.30pm amd Wednesdays at 1.30pm.
The Audio Described performance will be on Sat 27 Jan 7.30pm. The Lyric also offers a touch tour before this performance at 6pm, for further information and to book please email access@lyric.co.uk or call the Box Office on 020 87416850.
The Open Captioned performance will be on Sat 27 Jan 2.30pm.
Find out more and book tickets here or call the box office on 020 8741 6850.
January 25, 2018
