BOOKINGS OPEN use the button below to iTICKET
A funny honest account of life in the suburbs, where Fran and Bob Price have built a home, brought up four kids and still managed to keep their sense of humour. It should now be time for them to stop and smell Bob’s precious roses. But just when things look like slowing down, the lives of their wildly complicated adult children come crashing through the back door. Adult Content.
“Performance rights for THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE exclusively licenced by HLA
Management Pty Ltd, P.O. Box 1536, Strawberry Hills NSW 2012 (hla@hlamgt.com.au)”.
REVIEWS OF PLAY
Things I Know To Be True – Rotorua Little Theatre March 19-29. Review by Angela Frank.
Firstly, a recommendation. Take a moment to find the nearest ticketing link to Rotorua Little Theatre’s bold new production – you won’t want to miss it. The writing is just so good.
Australian playwright, Andrew Bovell, wrote Things I Know to Be True in 2012. Now, under Remo Malcolm’s direction, it is sensitively realised by the cast and crew. It’s gratifying when local theatre takes on an ambitious project, this is one quite different to previous years’ productions.
Wry, challenging, contemporary, the curtain opens to an impressively crafted set: a kitchen garden boasts roses in ‘first flush,’ and outdoor furniture extends the suburban back yard with its offerings for contained solitude.
Despite the exterior setting, Things I Know to Be True leads its audience behind ‘closed doors’ into the existential turbulence of the Prices, a quintessential working-class family in Adelaide.
Four adult children orbit the home of their parents, Fran and Bob, reflecting on the parental relationship that has laid their foundations through a series of illustrated monologues; unpacking layers of overbearing love and grit that have brought them through thirty years, to the present.
It’s no mean feat, the cast has its work cut out for it: Vulnerable monologues, demanding physicality, emotive arcs.
Within the play’s ‘everyday’ context, the four siblings could be interpreted in one-dimensional motifs, but Rotorua actors Katrina Aro, Kim Chapman, Tash Harland, and Alasdair Hay embody their characters so that the uniqueness of each stand alone, yet in unity with one another, as generations do.
Superbly performed by Rachael Bell is matriarch Fran, a “hard woman” who has worked years to nurture, love, and ultimately accept Bob, her equally hard-working and deeply principled husband, beautifully observed by local talent, Steve English.
The family tapestry is needled, and we look on while the rhythmic anger and angst that is eating the heart out of their collective happiness puzzles into place. Bovell’s script is incisive yet kind, absolving its anguished, hateful characters with forgiveness at being, simply, human.
This is a heart felt show, peppered with delightful references such as Kath and Kim’s “look at me” and Leonard Cohen’s timeless poetic voice – even the garden: domestic roses playing the ultimate metaphor, the fleeting, aromatic sweetness of life and love and the briefness of us all. The longest-shortest impacts of family life, marriage and individual existence fleetingly captured in delicate bloom.
ANOTHER ONE
Things I know to be True – By Andrew Bovell
Acclaimed Australian playwright Andrew Bovell never disappoints and nor did Rotorua Little Theatre. This play resonates and was relevant to today. The themes of family, loss and love.
Four children who struggle with the expectations from their parents. A Brechtian-style play that was episodic and moved through the seasons with each character breaking the fourth wall and sharing their inner thoughts. Congratulations to director Remo Royall-Malcolm for her ability to develop the distinct characterisation required. Acting was believable and sustained and, in many ways, relatable.
A tragic comedy which had me laughing one moment and reaching for tissues the next. I loved the play as you will too – don’t miss it. Well done to cast and crew Rotorua Little Theatre – Gabrielle Thurston
