Director Adam Mitchell chose his play and his collaborators with some care. Parts were sensitively cast; sets, costumes, lighting and sound carefully fitted together to produce a performance that was not just cohesive – it was a magically melded entirety that gave the audience a memorable theatrical experience.
Technical creatives Bryan Woltjen (sets and costumes), Trent Suidgeest (lighting), Ben Collins (sound) and Mia Holton (audio-visuals) warrant the highest of commendations for their work. From the first clap of thunder, flash of lightning and patter of raindrops as a moving window of light traverses the stage to reveal brief windows into brief lives, we are pulled into a seamless world where every part represents the whole and the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Everything we see and hear, from the costume design to the sounds of torrential rain, feeds the imagery.
There is, for instance a lot of eating in this play as characters gradually internalise events from the past, and much of the eating is of fish, which calls forth myriad connotations – something fishy, loaves and fishes, sacrifice, the ocean of life, the unconscious, fish falling from the sky, valuable fish that only the rich can eat – until the metaphors themselves seem to become symbolic.
In choosing his actors carefully, Mitchell was rewarded by sensitive depictions of some much-damaged human beings. Steve Turner, in his dual roles of Henry York and Gabriel Law gave us two well-drawn and very different characters of mature years, while Scott Sheridan as both Gabriel Law and Andrew Price refreshingly depicted two men we only see in the flush of promising youth. Igor Sas, as Joe Ryan, subtly played the odd man out: the stranger who is sacrificed on the altar that guards a terrible secret. Meantime, Vivienne Garrett, Julia Moody, Fiona Pepper and Alison van Reeken collectively presented the passion and the anguish of Maiden, Mother and Crone. They were all magnificent. It would be fruitless to single out any one of these fine players because When the Rain Stops Falling is above all a team effort that does nothing less than present the human condition it its entirety.
The work, while grippingly magnificent, is perhaps a trifle long at an interval-free hour and fifty-odd minutes. If all productions of this play are as seamless as this one, some lines are redundant, notably those in which the characters use dialogue to explain the reasons for their particular brands of angst. Given the gradual unfolding of the story and the symbolism so well presented in sight and sound, explanations are unnecessary. There are dark places in our psyches that we all instinctively relate to, and When the Rain Stops Falling speaks to this as well as any theatrical endeavour I have seen in half a century of theatre going.
Rating: Five stars
Black Swan State Theatre Company presents
When the Rain Stops Falling
By Andrew Bovell
Director: Adam Mitchell
Assistant Director: Matt Longman
Set & Costume Designer: Bryan Woltjen
Lighting Designer: Trent Suidgeest
Sound Designer: Ben Collins
Audio Visual Designer: Mia Holton
Movement Director: Claudia Alessi
Stage Manager: Anna Dymitr Hawkes
Cast includes: Vivienne Garrett, Julia Moody, Fiona Pepper, Igor Sas, Scott Sheridan, Steve Turner, Alison van Reeken
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre of WA
29 October-13 November 2011
Watch a behind the scenes video about the production here.
