Eight hours of theatre, including an intermission and a dinner break, may seem like overkill for the casual theatregoer and yet Griffin Theatre Company has made the bold decision to stage all three instalments of Louis Nowra’s The Lewis Trilogy in one day. The trilogy consists of: Summer of the Aliens (1992), Così (1992) and the late sequel This Much is True (2017). The trilogy has never been presented this way before and the occasion marks the end of Griffin as we know it, as the theatre is set to be closed mid-year, then partially demolished and renovated before reopening in 2026.
Nowra’s three plays are autobiographical, showing glimpses of his life at various ages – one could say that this premiere production is his Eras Tour.
The first play, which is easily the best of the three, imagines Nowra’s childhood as he grows into adolescence. He lives on a Housing Commission estate in suburban Melbourne with his single mother and grandmother, who is slowly losing her grasp on reality. Nowra’s portrait of the early 1960s is full of vivid details, real emotions, and clever use of symbolism and magical realism that feels thoughtful and original. In the play, Lewis’ obsession with aliens and UFOs forms a grounding (how ironic) onto which the audience can latch. His interest in the unknown is a relatable sentiment and is something this critic recalls from his childhood, spending hours flipping through books cataloguing history’s most infamous alien encounters.
Declan Greene, Griffin’s Artistic Director and also the director of this production, takes an approach to the text that encourages emotional clarity and adds stylistic touches at certain moments to provoke the audience into another place. One such prominent moment of style is the use of flickering lights. The theatre’s proscenium arch is disguised as a nostalgic movie cinema, with a marquee sign that the young characters change.
As Lewis’ obsession with aliens infects the real world, he starts to believe that the adults around him have been replaced by the Martian men from the movies. The lights of the cinema marquee flicker and hiss as if being altered by an electrical disturbance. The sign, which previously has indicated the title of an upcoming sci-fi B movie, now simply reads: “madness”.
After intermission, the second play begins. Over the years, Così has become a bit of a classic. The play revolves around a group of inmates at a psychiatric facility, as Lewis attempts to rehearse a production of Mozart’s Così fan Tutte. Since this concept gives actors a chance to deliver outrageous, funny characters, it has often played the repertory circuit in amateur or student productions.
Griffin’s production knows the strengths of the play and plays up the chaos. It’s in this chaos where actor Paul Capsis shines. Capsis plays various roles in all three plays and embraces the absurdity and ridiculousness of them, without sacrificing authenticity. The trilogy is worth seeing, perhaps for the performance of Capsis alone.
It is, however, unfortunate that Così somewhat struggles in comparison to Aliens. Greene and Nowra worked together to bring these three plays down to 90 minutes each, but it is Così that bears the brunt of the cuts. Story and emotional beats feel all over the place, and some characters barely get a chance to be on stage, despite the play clearly expecting the audience to have a greater connection to them. It all feels a bit rushed.
The final play, which was written 25 years later, follows a lonely, divorced Lewis, now in middle age, who has abandoned his playwriting career in favour of the more lucrative world of television. The play takes place mostly at The Rising Sun, a pub in the heart of King’s Cross, and attempts to marry the chaotic sensibility of Così with the emotional and nostalgic perspective of Aliens.
It’s a recipe that doesn’t really work. Out of all three plays, it is this one that feels the most fabricated, artificial and overwritten. In fact, any element of the script involving drugs seems ripped from the pages of TV’s Underbelly, and references to the first two plays feel shoehorned in rather than natural. It seems as if Nowra never imagined for this to be a trilogy and instead plugged in all the elements that he thought would be compelling, but forgot to write interesting characters. Despite the negativity of this review, I’ll admit that it is the compelling Paul Capsis that brings this chapter up a notch, playing various characters, including a hilarious meth dealer.
Read: Book review: One Another, Gail Jones
Throughout all three plays, the comforting presence of William Zappa (and his mellow voice) ties it all together. Although the three plays are a mixed bag in terms of literary quality, director Greene develops a consistent theatrical language throughout to keep the audience engaged.
The Lewis Trilogy (Summer of the Aliens, Così and This Much is True)
Griffin Theatre
Writer: Louis Nowra
Director: Declan Greene
Associate Director: Daley Rangi
Set Designer: Jeremy Allen
Costume Designer: Melanie Liertz
Lighting Designer: Kelsey Lee
Composer and Sound Designer Daniel Herten
Script Consultant, Inclusion, Intimacy and Consent Coordinator: Bayley Turner
Script and Disability Consultant: Christopher Bryant
Production Manager: Julia Orlando
Fight Choreographer: Tim Dashwood
Stage Manager: Tyler Fitzpatrick
Cast: Thomas Campbell, Paul Capsis, Philip Lynch, Masego Pitso, Masego Pitso, Nikki Viveca, Darius Williams, Ursula Yovich, William Zappa
The Lewis Trilogy will be performed until 21 April 2024.
