THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS

 

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. Adapted for the stage by Verity Laughton.

Directed by Jessica Arthur. Set designer Jonathon Oxlade. Costume designer Ailsa Paterson. Composer and sound designer Max Lyandvert.Lighting designer Trent Suidgeest. Assistant Director Shannon Rush. Cast: Kathryn Adams, Arkia Ashraf, Ksenja Logos, Brian Meegan, Johnny Nasser, Angela Nica Sullen, Shannen Alyce Quan and James Smith. The Playhouse. Canberra Theatre. May 15-24 2025. Bookings 62752700.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

 You do not need to have read Pip Williams’s enormously successful The Dictionary of Lost Words to fully appreciate and be rapt in Verity Laughton’s spellbinding adaptation. I sat absorbed in Williams’s story of the wonder of words and her ingenious concept to view the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary through the prism of the magic of words and their meanings as seen by the play’s protagonist Esme Nicoll. Esme is the daughter of Harry Nicoll, a lexicographer on Dr. James Murray’s team to record all the words of the English language. Widower Nicoll brings his daughter to the Scriptorium or "Scrippy", a transformed garden shed at the back of Murray’s residence in Oxford where Esme waits under a table while her father and the team of lexicographers and copyists undertake the enormous task of cataloguing and sorting the words on postcard sized paper under their alphabetical letters. One day a card falls to the floor and is quickly retrieved by Esme. Significantly the word is Bondmaid referring to slavery and a woman’s lot in life to serve until death. And so begins the curious four year old’s quest to discover and uncover words pertaining to women that have been lost, overlooked and discarded from the Oxford English Dictionary. What follows is Esme’s quest for identity and meaning through the words that she discovers and stores in a chest belonging to Murray’s maid Lizzie Lester.

Shannen Alyce Quan as Esme Nicholls

 Laughton has skilfully condensed Williams’s epic story into an engrossing and fascinating theatrical account, not only of the nature of language and its different meanings but of the woman’s place in that recording and the differences between men and women and how the words pertain to their experience. In adapting The Dictionary of Lost Words and realizing the book as a work for the theatre, Laughton and director Jessica Arthur have faithfully represented and embellished author Williams’s intent to place the woman’s experience at the very heart of her novel. In a male dominated society of the Victorian era in which the creation of the first English dictionary was defined by the older white males, the character of Esme is not only strikingly illuminating but vital to understand the differences and the similarities that exist between men and women and therefore the different ways in which the use of the language defines gender. We see Esme grow from an insatiably curious and highly intelligent four year old to a teenager experiencing the shock of a first period to a grown womn searching out a career in lexicography to a woman tasting her first experience of sexual intimacy and the painful experience of an unwanted pregnancy and the uniquely female experience of childbirth. We see her growing passion for female rights through involvement with suffragette activist Tilda Taylor (Angela Nica Sullen) and a woman’s helpless experience of loss and grief at wartime.

Esme and Tilda Taylor (Angela Nica Sullen)

As a male member of the audience I am acutely aware of  not only how language and words define who we are and how different meanings impact on our view of ourselves and the world but also of the significance of the unifying force of the word Love in contrast to the definition of Bondmaid. The co-production of The Dictionary of Lost Words by the State Theatre Company of South Australia with the Sydney Theatre Company touches the heart and opens the mind.  Jonathon Oxlade’s ingenious design of a wall of pigeon holes becomes a repository for words or a collection of curiosities or house lights in Trent Suidgeest’s clever lighting design. The changing scenes and timelines are evocatively underscored by Max Lyandvert’s beautifully composed score from the playful opening music to the soulful strains of The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond. Dates and locations are displayed on a screen while Arthur directs a fluid and mesmerizing production that fascinates, enlightens, captivates and moves us to tears or elicits gales of laughter in the scene in Covered Market where Mabel (Ksenja Logan ) teaches Esme the meaning of c**t. 

Esme, Mabel, and Lizzie at Covered Market

 

A uniformly strong cast bring Laughton’s adaptation to life with verve and relish. The actors change roles with ease and absolute conviction. Only Johnny Nasser as Harry Nicoll, Brian Meegan as Sir. James Murray and Shannen Alyce Quan as Esme retain the one role. Quan gives an incandescent performance from the delightfully effervescent young child to the perplexed teenager, the lovestruck young woman, the feisty suffragette and the grief stricken war widow. Quan runs the gamut of emotion and experience in a performance that is uplifting, moving, powerful and affirmative. There is excellent support from Johnny Nasser as Esme’s father, Kathryn Adams as Lizzie Lester, Mrs. Smyth and Maria, Ksenja Logos as Mabel, Ditte and suffragettes Alice and Megan, Brian Meegan as Sir James Murray, Arkia Ashraf as Gareth Owen and Mr. Crane, James Smith as Bill Taylor and Frederick Sweatman and Angela Nica Sullen as Tilda Taylor, Sarah and Arthur Mayling.

Harry Nicoll (Johnny Nasser) and Esme (Shannen Alyce Quan)

 

It comes as no surprise that Pip Williams’s original story should have garnered so many awards and adulation. This production is a noble tribute to the book and a fascinating and heart-warming theatrical delight in its own right. Apparently the Canberra Season is unsurprisingly sold out. I still urge you to try however you may to get a ticket, This is a theatrical treat that you won’t want to miss.

The Wrong Gods - Belvoir

 

The Wrong Gods by S. Shakthidharan.  Belvoir Theatre co-produced with Melbourne Theatre Company, at Belvoir Theatre, Sydney, May 3 – June 1, 2025.
Supported by The Hive – Supporting emerging talent at Belvoir

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 11

CAST
Nirmala: Nadie Kammallaweera    Isha: Radhika Mudaliyar
Devi: Manali Datar            Lakshmi: Vaishnavi Suryaprakesh


CREATIVES
Writer and Co-Director: S. Shakthidharan
Co-Director: Hannah Goodwin
Set and Costume Designer: Keerthi Subramanyam
Lighting Designer: Amelia Lever-Davidson
Sound Designer: Steve Francis
Associate Sound Designer: Madeleine Picard
Composer: Sabyasachi (Rahul) Bhattacharya
Tabla performed by Aman Pal

Indian soundscapes recorded by George Vlad (mindful-audio.com)
Movement & Fight Director, Intimacy Coordinator: Nigel Poulton
Vocal Coach: Laura Farrell
Stage Manager: Madelaine Osborn; Stage Manager: Steph Storr
Assistant Stage Manager: Mia Kanzaki; Assistant Stage Manager:
Grace Sackman

Digital Program at https://belvoir.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/TWG-Digital-Program_v5.pdf
Cover photography by Daniel Boud
Rehearsal photography by Brett Boardman

The four women at a light moment in rehearsal as
Isha, Nirmala, Devi and Lakshmi
The Wrong Gods by S. Shakthidharan, Belvoir 2025

 

 

We are putting our faith in the wrong ideas. The wrong systems. The wrong gods.  That woman, in the valley. Her gods and our gods are going to need to talk to each other. They are going to have to work together. It will take an openness on both sides. They are ready.
But are we?

This is the ending of the Author/Director’s program note.  It’s where we begin to appreciate his play, written he says, because of his experience more than a decade ago:

She's sitting on the banks of her river, deep in her valley, in the remote heart of India. She's staring at me. I'm brushing off her soil from my lenses, my tripod, my cables. I've just finished an interview with her. As I head back up the mountain, to where my Australian arts colleagues are waiting, she yells: 'make sure you get our story onto that TV!' It's not a request: it's an order. Her cow bellows his [her?] support. 'I'll try, aunty,' I feebly call back down the mountain.

Not on television, but powerfully on real-life stage, The Wrong Gods makes its point in a straightforward manner, in 90 minutes, no interval.

That woman in the valley, with her cow but no man left to work, is Nirmala, a traditional small farmer, needing her teenage daughter to leave school to keep the farm going.  Isha has been told by her teacher, Devi, that she is very bright.  Isha insists on going on to school in the city.

Both mother and daughter are very determined characters.  Though Nirmala is afraid of ‘modern’ influences, after a highly emotional argument, she finally gives in and lets Isha go.

But soon Lakshmi appears, a modern executive, in a program to explain to the villagers how her American company is being funded, including by the Indian government, to dam the valley to supply clean water to the millions living in the city.  This will drown 40,000 people's homes.  In the theatre world, there are echoes here going right back to Henrik Ibsen and An Enemy of the People.  

On the side, I had a picture in mind of the town of Adaminaby, drowned in the building of the 1940s-50s Snowy Mountains water supply scheme in Kosciuszko National Park, not far from Canberra, Australia, where I live.

When Isha returns she is educated in science and sees the necessity of modern development, the new Indian god, while her mother refuses to leave and would rather drown than deny the traditional gods and thousands of years of her indigenous way of life.

I thought then of the sincere acknowledgement of the Gadigal Eora people, original custodians of the land where Belvoir stands,  given by Radhika Mudaliyar just before moving into the role of Isha at the opening of the play.  In the end, as Isha, she reconciles with her mother Nirmala – but as S. Shakthidharan says, are we ready?

And then I thought – in 200 years modern progress has already brought us far worse than the damming of many valleys like Nirmala’s.  Even if we can limit the CO2 in the atmosphere with our net-zero plan by 2050, we are already past tipping-points according to most scientists – like Isha becomes in the play.  Can we ever be ready for a world-wide future so inhospitable as to be incapable of supporting human life?

The Wrong Gods pulls no punches.

Isha and her mother Nirmala
in rehearsal reacting to the inevitability of modern 'progress'
as Lakshmi and Devi explain.
The Wrong Gods by S. Shakthidharan, Belvoir 2025

 

CENTENARY ORGAN RECITAL

Samuel Giddy, organ

Canberra City Uniting Church May 10

 

Reviewed by Len Power

 

Exactly 100 years ago, on 10 May 1925, the opening recital took place of a new organ built for the new St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Goulburn NSW. The organ had been dedicated as a memorial to those who had fought and fell in the Great War.

It was donated to the Canberra City Uniting Church in 1987, where it was rebuilt and re-dedicated in 2012. It fits harmoniously into the modern architecture of the church and, with the sun shining in, it was the perfect setting for a recital celebrating the organ’s centenary. Samuel Giddy was the recitalist for the afternoon’s program.

Born in Yass NSW, Giddy began his organ studies at the ACT Organ School in 2011. Studying then at the Sydney Conservatorium, he graduated in 2019 with first-class honours and the Frank Hutchens Student of the Year Award.

Giddy has won many international prizes and, in 2023, he was appointed music minister of St. John’s Anglican Church, Darlinghurst NSW. He was also appointed Music Director at St. Mark’s Darling Point NSW in 2025.

Samuel Giddy, recitalist

The large program for the recital commenced with J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which was fitting as it was also played at the 1925 recital in Goulburn. A haunting work, it seemed to achieve another dimension live and in the hands of Giddy, who gave it a superb performance.

The program worked chronologically from Bach in the early 18^th century through the baroque and classical era to the modern day, giving examples of the work of various composers such as John Stanley, Johann Gottfried Müthel, César Franck, Louis Vierne, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Flor Peeters.

The program was well-chosen with both grand works and quieter, reflective works. It was an instructive and entertaining journey, all played with skill and feeling.

Giddy introduced each of these works with interesting details about them and their composers. His down to earth, friendly style built an immediate rapport with the audience and his enthusiasm for this music and instrument was infectious.

Attending a live organ recital is the best way to appreciate the power of this instrument and the music written for it. This was an excellent and very enjoyable recital.

 

Photo by Len Power

This review was first published by Canberra CityNews digital edition on 11 May 2025.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

 

LIGHT | INTERSECTION and NUDES

Visual Art (Photography) Exhibitions Review | Brian Rope

LIGHT | INTERSECTION I Alex Walker
NUDES | Skye Thompson

Photo Access, Canberra | 11 April - 10 May 2025

I will start by suggesting these two exhibitions have no obvious or apparent relationship to each other. One is about drawing us into “a dynamic encounter where light is both subject and material.” The other “floats towards” troubling family histories and “re-sensitises.” I will return to this later but first let me discuss each exhibition quite separately.

Alex Walker is a trained darkroom photographer interested, amongst other things, in analogue processes and spatial perception. Her work seeks to explore how light travels. Showing it in Light | Intersection, she changes our perception of what we see. Information on the gallery website and in Kathryne Genevieve Honey’s essay in the room sheet explain that it is a site-specific exhibition exploring the role of light in photography and architecture.

The “architecture” of the gallery is not exactly spectacular. However, the moment I walked in and saw coloured lights moving around and across the surfaces of the first space and of the exhibits within it, I was drawn in. The light impacted on the sensory information which I received and endeavoured to understand and interpret. That, after all, is what perception is all about.

Alex Walker, Window Warp II, 2025

Light | Intersection installation image – Brian Rope 

Light | Intersection installation image – Brian Rope 

In the second gallery space Walker has placed illuminated light boxes within the ceiling - and above mirrors on the floor. Walking carefully between the mirrors whilst looking into their surfaces and at the changing lights overhead is a joyous sensory experience revealing more new ways of considering and experiencing photography.

Light | Intersection installation image – Brian Rope

Light | Intersection installation image – Brian Rope

The second exhibition, Nudes, is in the separate third gallery space. The artist, Skye Thompson, has reimagined what she describes as “the overlooked material of 8mm home films - transparent leader, light leaks, and physical blemishes - as a space for reflection and repair.”

The “vaguely sexual titles” of a number of artworks brought smiles to my face. A copy of her Nudes zine in a fabric bag alongside a handwritten instruction “touch me” and an arrow pointing to it. A vibrating artwork about the clitoris. Even a copy of the room sheet is somewhat cheekily displayed within an article of feminine underwear.

Image of Thompson’s vibrating artwork on light box – Brian Rope

 

Image of displayed room sheet – Brian Rope

However, the important message in this exhibition is not humorous. The artist has written in the room sheet “Architectural shapes, the body and vaguely sexual titles all speak to my longing for a connection that is not predicated on denial. The aura of violence and its disavowal can be felt in these works. Past and present are touching each other in a dream space. My Nudes call for intimacy and repair.”

Thompson studied screen production in the late nineties, directed film clips for bands, and shot her own vignettes and small documentaries. For these artworks, she has drawn from 8mm films created by her family forebears - slicing and overlapping selected fragments. The resultant delicate compositions “explore memory, the body, and the politics of visibility.”

Skye Thompson, Sun Bake, 2024

Through a practice grounded in disruption, she embraces imperfection as a form of resistance. Her digital scans of film retain whatever particles are on the material – dust, saliva, whatever. Quite the opposite of cinematic clarity and control, the result is an alternative archive - intimate, fractured, and quietly radical. Each artwork is well worth spending time with - looking, exploring, noticing, doing what every good photographer does – SEEING! 

So, was I wrong to suggest there is no connection between these two exhibitions? Yes, I was. Both are very much about sensory experiences. Both should impact on the viewer’s perceptions. Both challenge us.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

Harold Pinter Double Bill - Ensemble Theatre

 

The Lover and The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney May 2 – June 7 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 10

Director: Mark Kilmurry
Set & Costume Designer: Simone Romaniuk
Lighting Designer: Matt Cox
Composer & Sound Designer: Daryl Wallis
Stage Manager: Lauren Tulloch; Asst Stage Manager: Yasmin Breeze

Cast:
Nicole da Silva; Gareth Davies; Anthony Taufa


Harold Pinter.org
www.haroldpinter.org › plays › plays_lover offers an interesting view of The Lover when it was first presented at the Arts Theatre UK in 1963.  

‘Richard’ (husband) or ‘Mark’ (lover) both played with precision by Gareth Davies is English upper middle class to a T.  ‘Sarah’ or ‘Whore’ even more so by Nicole da Silva, I thought – partly because I think Pinter gave her opportunities for more varied emotional responses to situations.

But an un-named reviewer in The Financial Times (who perhaps may have attended the same long boring meetings as Richard) wrote in 1963:
“Harold Pinter is [by] far the most original, as he is also the most accomplished, of the younger generation of playwrights. And lately he has added to his other remarkable qualities an extreme formal eloquence. This quality will not, I suppose, endear him to the sterner of my younger colleagues, who regard formal eloquence as a sign of frivolity. They are all for ragged ends edges and untidy ends. But for those with any feeling for shape this addition to Mr. Pinter’s range is an uncommon delight.”  

He (I assume all financial journalists were ‘he’ in those days) goes to praise Pinter’s “absolute economy of means to produce a ... precision of effect. The little play works simply beautifully, like a perfectly adjusted piece of miniature machinery; except that machinery is dead and this play is scintillating alive.”

Gareth Davies as 'Richard' and Nicole da Silva as Sarah
in The Lover, Ensemble 2025

I was young at 22 in 1963 (Pinter was 33) and could not have agreed with The Financial Times more.  Now I have some doubts.

Mark Kilmurry and his actors, including Anthony Taufa as the milkman in The Lover, have honoured Pinter’s reputation for precision exactly, but what else has Pinter left us with 60 years later?

The idea of risky game-playing between a couple now ten years into their marriage seems to offer a warning – if we feel there needs to be a serious intention behind the play – in just one line.  She asks why does he want to stop, and he replies “Because of the children.”  I’m not clear whether Pinter meant only a plot device – that is, the sons will be home soon from boarding school – or whether he meant that parents need to stay married without having to play such games, to prevent emotional confusion damaging their children.

Today we would perhaps ask for more on this kind of issue from the most original and accomplished playwright of our younger generation.

And I wonder, too, then, about The Dumb Waiter.  Davies and Taufa got their Londoner accents pretty well from the Teddy-Boy parts of the city my father made sure I didn’t go near, and the play makes something out of the idea of political power coming down from above, but my literary studies in its year, 1959, emphasised The Dumb Waiter as a clever writer playing another kind of theatre game – called Absurd Drama.

Not only are the two thugs waiting to kill on the orders from an unknown gangster above their station in criminal society, but they were clearly just a variation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.  Beckett was in his fifties by now, and Pinter barely 30 – and ready to prove himself as good at absurdism.  I still think Beckett was better.

Gareth Davies and Anthony Taufa
in The Dumb Waiter, Ensemble 2025

Ensemble’s production of the two plays as a Double Bill certainly brings up plenty to laugh at, especially with such top-class actors (and an amazing scene change in only 20 minutes during interval); and for people much younger than a stern oldie like me there is much to learn from Pinter’s originality and “extreme formal eloquence”.

I see plenty of being “all for ragged ends edges and untidy ends” on social media today.  Stop it, I say – as I suggest Pinter meant.

WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING

 

When the Rain Stops Falling by Andrew Bovell. 

Directed by Chris Baldock. Assisted by Zac Bridgman. Stage manager Rhiley Winnett. Properties Natalie Trafford and Chris Baldock. Set design and realization Chris Baldock. Projection Realization Rhiley Winnett. Sound design Chris Baldock and Rhiley Winnett. Lighting, sound and projection operation Rhiley Winnett. Costumes The cast and Chris Baldock.  Mockingbird Theatre Company. Belco Arts Belconnen Arts Centre. May 8-17  2025 Bookings:  belcoarts.ticketsales.com

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

  

Dyllan Ormazabal (Andrew Price) and 
Chris Baldock as Gabriel York

Mockingbird Theatre Company’s production of Andrew Bovell’s When The Rain Stops Falling continues to present Canberra audiences with works that capture the imagination and stimulate the intellect. Playwright Bovell is a master of the dramatic construct. In telling the story of four generations of the Law family, Bovell weaves a tapestry of ingenious storytelling that leads audiences through a labyrinth of family secrets, scandalous conduct, fateful relationships and the desperate search for elusive answers to one’s identity.

Leonidas Katsanis (Gabriel Law) Liz St Clair Long (the older Elizabeth Law)

Director Chris Baldock contains the epic scope of familial legacy, abandonment, tragedy and human struggle within the intimate confines of Mockingbird’s in the round setting. The play opens under a canopy of plastic umbrellas. The cast wander through the space to escape the rain leaving Gabriel York  (Chris Baldock) alone on stage and ruminating on the symbolism of a fish falling from the sky, and awaiting the arrival of his son Andrew (Dyllan Ormazabal). He is coming to learn his heritage, a legacy lost in the shadows of the past.

Bovell’s narrative transcends and interpolates time navigating the lives of 60 year old matriarch Elizabeth Law (Liz St Clair Long), her son Gabriel Law (Leonidis Katsanis),his father Henry Law (Zac Bridgman), the younger Elizabeth (Ruth Hudson), Gabriel’s girlfriend Gabrielle York (Jayde Dowhy), the older Gabrielle York (Jess Beange) and older Gabrielle’s husband Joe Ryan (Bruce Hardie). Bovell gradually unfolds the chapters of the Law story, revealing a dysfunctional family history, unable to communicate, torn apart by human failing, victims of fate’s tragic events and yet ultimately arriving at redemption and hope in a final scene of reconciliation of the past over a fish soup meal around the dining table. In Baldock’s production it is a moment that resounds with the victory of hope over adversity.

Jayde Dowhy (younger Gabrielle York) Jess Beange (older Gabrielle)

Bovell challenges his audience. His web of mystery beguiles and intrigues. He demands curiosity from his audience and from the production team of When The Rain Stops Falling. Each scene promises revelation, a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that illuminates the mystery but only provides the final answers to the puzzle when Gabriel York unpacks the contents of a suitcase and presents them to his son at the end of the play. 

Director Baldock and his strong ensemble cast rise to the challenge. We are compelled to care for each character, for their desires and for their failings.  Mockingbird’s carefully staged and engrossing production will cast a veil of reflection that will haunt you long after you leave the theatre. Ultimately we are confronted by the same question; “Who am I?” We are all a thread in Bovell’s tapestry of human experience. When The Rain Stops Falling rightfully earns a place in the treasure trove of classic Australian plays. Mockingbird Theatre Company’s reverent production does the play justice. Don’t miss it.

Zac Bridgman as Henry Law






Jess Beange as the older Gabrielle York
Bruce Hardie as Joe Ryan

Photos by Chris Baldock

When the Rain Stops Falling

When the Rain Stops Falling. Based on the play by Andrew Bovell. Mockingbird Theatrics at Belconnen Arts Centre May 8-17, 2025

Directed and designed by Chris Baldock

​Reviewed by Frank McKone
May 8

Cast:
Gabriel York – Chris Baldock
Elizabeth Law (Older) – Liz St Clair Long; Elizabeth Law (Younger) – Ruth Hudson
Joe Ryan – Bruce Hardie
Gabrielle York (Older) – Jess Beange; Gabrielle York (Younger) – Jayde Dowhy
Gabriel Law – Leonidas Katsinas; Henry Law – Zac Bridgman
Andrew Price – Dyllan Ormazabal

Production Team:
Director: Chris Baldock; Stage Manager: Rhiley Winnett
Assistant Director: Zac Bridgman; Properties: Natalie Trafford and Chris Baldock
Set & Projection Design: Chris Baldock; Projection Realisation: Rhiley Winnett
Sound Design: Chris Baldock
Lighting, Sound and Projection Operation: Rhiley Winnett
Costumes: Chris Baldock and Cast

As Gabriel Law and Gabrielle York

When the Rain Stops Falling is among the most significant Australian plays.  This is because it’s like an Argyle diamond.  Of all diamonds in the world, it has a special character, which is peculiar to Australia.  

The diamond itself at core is emotional as a study in more than 20 scenes of a family in regeneration over a lifetime.  The emotion is centred on Gabriel York’s need to re-connect with his only son after he left his wife some 20 years before when he was 30 and Andrew was 8.

But the diamond is bigger than it first seems.  Gabriel senses a connection back to his grandfather, through a series of family links over 80 years, which finally bring Andrew to find his father.  It is in the playing out of these links of loves, and failures to love enough, full of hopes and ironies, that the diamond shows itself to be Australian, of many colours.

As I wrote about the original Sydney Theatre Company production in 2010, “‘The play is unrelievedly bleak but with a denouement of unexpected hope: a moving, almost revelatory evening of theater’ [Richard Zoglin, Time] while the Australian audience on opening night in Canberra responded to the many moments of ironic humour which are built into our culture.  We certainly found the unexpected hope, but not an unrelieved bleakness.  In fact, without laughter, I suspect, the unexpected hope at the end would have been maudlin and sentimental.  In this production, it was ultimately satisfying to know that Gabriel and his son Andrew, with the help of a fish falling from the sky, could at last enjoy each other’s company after four generations of emotional disaster.”

Chris Baldock’s production of When the Rain Stops Falling, in a small scale in-the-round setting, captures Gabriel’s frustrations and final happiness in Andrew’s company, but is more subdued in tone.  This is because there are facets of the diamond which bring to light issues, especially about the natural environment and social behaviour – including the fish falling out of the sky – which encouraged a higher level of Australian ironic laughter on the bigger stage, particularly on the contrasts between the Englishness of the attitudes in Gabriel’s grandparents and the realities of colonial life.

Yet the seriousness, especially of the women’s lack of status as against the men’s belief in going their own way no matter what, certainly comes through as it should, perhaps even more so in 2025 than in 2010, making this production well worth seeing.

And not to forget that Climate Change is the brightest political facet of this play.

__________________________________________________________________________________

For follow-up, I think it’s fair to say that Bovell’s playscript is a twist-and-turn experience in trying to catch on to the stories in Gabriel’s family history.  

If you need help, here is a family tree, based on Cygnet Theatre; ShowerHacks.com. "Genealogy, the ancestry of When the Rain Stops Falling."; and www.sustainabletheatre.org/index.php/narrative/climate-change-generational-influence

 As they appear in their various scenes:

Grandfather Henry Law in his Forties in the 1960’s
Grandmother (younger) Elizabeth Law in her Thirties in the 1960’s
                        (older) Elizabeth Law in her  Fifties in 1988
Father Gabriel Law at Twenty-eight in 1988
Mother (younger) Gabrielle York at Twenty-four in 1988
                (older) Gabrielle York in her Fifties in 2013
                Joe Ryan (married to Gabrielle York) in his Fifties in 2013
Gabriel York at Fifty in 2039
Eliza Price – Andrew’s mother doesn't appear.
Andrew Price at Twenty-eight in 2039
 
The pictures below are from Cygnet Theatre, San Diego, California

 

This was created by the Cygnet Theatre while producing When the Rain Stops Falling to explain the connections of the characters. With this, we can understand the generational repetitive actions that involve the change in climate.  

 

 

 

 

 

WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING

 

Written by Andrew Bovell

Directed by Chris Baldock

Mockingbird Theatre Company

Belconnen Arts Centre to 17 May

 

Reviewed by Len Power 8 May 2025

 

In Alice Springs 2039, a fish falls from the sky. What follows is a fascinating puzzle involving two families over four generations from 1959 in London to Australia eighty years later. This epic play explores family relationships across the generations. Pain, secrets, love, unanswered questions, destruction, longing and forgiveness come together to produce an extraordinary picture of hope and humanity.

Andrew Bovell’s play, first performed in 2008, is beautifully written and compelling in its construction. It has a lot to say about people and families and how unresolved issues can pass down the generations. The constant rain throughout the years and fish falling from the sky gives it a troubling feeling of impending apocalypse.

The audience is drawn deeply into the action as it unfolds. At first puzzling, the play stealthily takes its time to fully enlighten us. There is no interval in this almost two hour play, but the time goes very quickly as the pieces of the puzzle within are cleverly locked into place.

As the play jumps forward and back in time, the nine actors, Liz St Clair Long, Ruth Hudson, Bruce Hardie, Jess Beange, Jayde Dowhy, Leonidas Katsanis, Zac Bridgman, Dyllan Ormazabal and Chris Baldock play with confidence and skill, bringing these characters vividly to life and making them people we can understand and empathize with.

Director, Chris Baldock’s simple set design of suspended umbrellas, the constant sound of rain and the atmospheric lighting add considerably to the sense of time and place.

This is a fine, absorbing play from one of Australia’s great playwrights. Chris Baldock’s stylish direction in the round is masterly. His attention to detail, keeping the action clear and well-paced, as well as obtaining very real characterisations from his cast, make this another memorable and enjoyable production from the Mockingbird Theatre Company.

 

Photos by Chris Baldock

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

Sweet Charity. Book by Neil Simon. Lyrics by Dorothy Field. Music by Cy Coleman. Conceived, staged and choreographed by Bob Fosse. Directed by Joel Horwood. Musical director Callum Tolhurst-Close. Choreographer James Tolhurst-Close. Free-Rain Theatre. Q Theatre, Queanbeyan. Until May 18. By Alanna Maclean.

Vanessa Valois -Amy Orman - Kristy Griffin - Photo Credit Ben Appleton

Sweet Charity is a strange old mixture with its origins in a Fellini film and its American development having a book by Neil Simon, but it’s a piece with its own bittersweet morality. 

And it was originally shaped by the great choreographer Bob Fosse. 

At its centre and wonderfully dominating the show is Amy Orman as the somewhat naive but ever hopeful Charity, belting out song after song as she tells her story. 

She’s working as a dance hall hostess but yearns for a better life. Friends and co workers Nickie (Vanessa Valois) and Helene (Kristy Griffin) join her magnificently in that great hustlers’ number Hey Big Spender. She meets Oscar (Joshua Kirk), who is a nervous young bloke right out of Neil Simon rather than Fellini and she hopes for a settled life with him. 

Beautiful Simon stuff; they are trapped in a lift, he turns out to be full of neuroses well captured by Kirk and a settled life with him might be as much an illusion as is the strange world of Italian film star Vittorio (incisively self centred performance by Eamon McCaughan) that Charity also dabbles in. You’ll know a lot of the songs and they are given a wholehearted performance by a strong cast. 

It’s a show driven by the central character but it also depends very much upon teamwork and the capacity of members of the team to step briefly into sharp cameos. This cast rises to the challenges. 

A splendidly spare set by Chris Zuber, easily manipulated by the cast, evokes settings from the dance hall to a broken down lift to Vittorio’s luxury apartment. Fiona Leach’s costumes give us a real glimpse of the 1960s. 

And it is good to glimpse musical director Callum Tolhurst-Close and the orchestra driving the show upstage behind screens. So if your favourite songs include Rhythm of Life or If My Friends Could See Me Now go out to Queanbeyan and enjoy.

CIMF: LIVING POEMS OF THE SEA

Sally Walker

Sally Walker, flautist

Lyle Chan, writer and composer

The National Film and Sound Archive May 3

 

Reviewed by Len Power

 

 

Described as a meditation on the enthralling world of dolphins and whales in music, sound, words and images, the world premiere of this work with renowned Canberra flautist, Sally Walker, was a feast for the eyes and senses. It proved to be even more than that, with an impassioned and persuasive plea to end noise and other pollution in our oceans and our planet.

Using a variety of flutes as well as percussive instruments, Walker created a haunting soundscape that complemented the beautiful, often dreamlike video on a large screen behind her. Often playing to pre-recorded music and voice as well as speaking much of the commentary live, it was an impressively mounted presentation that was both entertaining and informative.

Those of us lucky enough to have had close encounters with dolphins could relate to Walker’s description of her first encounter with dolphins at an early age. Her quest to communicate with them through sound was fascinating and the images of her on the bow of a boat speeding through the waters of Pt. Stephens NSW while playing the flute to a school of jumping dolphins was memorable.

Her lifelong fascination with cetaceans (marine mammals like dolphins and whales) has led her to friendships with people like dolphin researcher, Dr Olivia De Bergerac and others. Many of these people talk passionately in the video. Historical and recent footage is presented as well as first-hand accounts of amazing human-cetacean interactions.

Our complex relationship with these creatures is shown to have been both good and bad. The importance of protection and preservation of these and other unique creatures in our world is clearly stated.

The 70 minute presentation was spell-binding. During the bows, Sally Walker invited many of the people involved in the production of the show to join her on stage. Not being aware that these people were in the audience, it was a delightful opportunity to see and applaud so many of them including composer and writer, Lyle Chan, scientist Dr. Olivia De Bergerac, videographer Murray Farrell and Uncle Ossie Cruse.

 

Photos by Peter Hislop

This review was first published by Canberra CityNews digital edition on 4 May 2025.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.