This is a review of the 2021 Theatre Works season of When the Rain Stops Falling
Australian theatre has a tendency to churn through new works and spit them out the back end; very few of our plays get remounted compared to countries like the US or the UK, so the layers of silt required for them to become “classics” never has the chance to build. Andrew Bovell’s 2008 When the Rain Stops Falling is one of the exceptions, having been restaged plenty of times both nationally and internationally since its debut in Adelaide. It isn’t hard to see why: a work of shimmering humanism and pathos, it only increases in urgency as the planet tilts further towards its own destruction.
Environmental destruction and intergenerational neglect are certainly prominent themes, but Bovell is far too smart a playwright to lash us with didacticism. Humanity’s inability to deal with trauma on a global scale is mirrored by the characters’ taciturn responses to their own grief, and the tomb-like silence that befalls them underscores their crushing sense of bewilderment. Under Briony Dunn’s thoughtful direction, these people’s emotional dissociation is not only credible, it’s quietly compelling.
The plot is complex, spanning as it does multiple generations from 1959 London to 2039 Alice Springs. We have two characters named Gabriel and one named Gabrielle. We have older and younger versions of characters existing on the same playing space. And yet, with a little adjustment and some concentration, the audience can quite easily follow the emotional journeys, which largely consist of varying iterations of fathers leaving, mothers staying silent and children lost in the gaps of time.
Francis Greenslade plays the future Gabriel, a man haunted by a past he only understands in fragments, but also that character’s grandfather Henry, a loving family man in England who will somehow go on to mysteriously disappear in central Australia. Hangdog, shabby and almost profoundly bewildered by the things he has done and the things done to him, he cuts a tragic figure, in dual roles that feel utterly lived in. If it isn’t quite revelatory, it’s certainly a performance that deepens this actor’s range and is hopefully an indication of even finer work to come.
Margaret Mills is superbly coiled and shaken as Henry’s wife Elizabeth, and Esther Van Doornum adroitly sketches the outline of the character as a younger woman. As the original Gabriel – Henry’s son who returns to Australia to piece together the mystery of his lost father – Darcy Kent is rock solid; reserved, dignified and yet privately desperate, he is the play’s dramatic engine, and convincing throughout. Lucy Chaix makes a wrenchingly broken younger Gabrielle, and Heather Bolton is simply a knockout as the older iteration; flinty and confused, she nevertheless brims with a hard-won wisdom. Alex Pinder rounds out the cast with a beautiful, heartfelt turn as Gabrielle’s husband Joe.
Dunn directs with total assurance, even if some of the scene transitions could quicken as the play lengthens. Some of the actors’ emotional transitions, too, need work: outbursts tend to come from nowhere, or their build up isn’t clearly delineated. What Dunn really nails is the play’s atmosphere and dramatic structure, that rocking sensation that comes from taking in too much water. Her control of the narrative timelines also feels effortless. Greg Clarke’s very simple but effective set is aided enormously by Clare Springett’s bold and clever lighting. If it doesn’t exactly challenge the play, this production certainly gives it the artistry it deserves.
All these years later, Bovell’s play has only gained in eminence and power. Some of the work’s technical brilliance is awe-inspiring; particularly impressive is the way his phrasal repetitions reach both backwards and forwards in time. At one point, a younger version of a character says “Parents can be so cruel”, only for her older version to alter the sentiment with “children can be so cruel”. This is the true genius of When the Rain Stops Falling, its ability to thread inextricably past and future, to wrap us in cataclysm and still have us reaching for hope. It is an undeniable classic now, and therefore stunningly relevant.
