Alternative Media Group

THEATRE: WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING

Author:

Amelia G

Posted:

Monday, 18 May 2009

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The rumours are true: this new Australian play is an instant classic. It’s unusual for theatre to be so powerful on both emotional and intellectual levels but Andrew Bovell’s brilliant script is at once deeply moving and thought provoking – not to mention enormously entertaining.

From 1950s London to Alice Springs in 2049, When the Rain Stops Falling interweaves a series of connected stories, as various individuals confront uncertainty about the future and the past.

With hats being lost, fish being found and people sitting down to eat in small flats during relentless rainfall, the passing of time shows more continuities and repetitions than changes. As we go forward through generations we learn that patterns of betrayal, abandonment and suffering are passed on, and while the world is changing (even when the world is ending), human nature stays the same.

Director Chris Drummond says the production came out of a shared sense of hopelessness about things like the invasion of Iraq, the ‘war on terror’, Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers, and John Howard’s refusal to say sorry to the nation’s indigenous people. “It felt at the time like we were going down the shit hole,” he recalls over the phone to me from his home in Adelaide, “and the show arose as a response to that despair.”

But at the same time When the Rain Stops Falling is full of optimism. “It tells us that sometimes solutions to enormous problems can start out very small,” says Drummond, “a small gesture from one generation can stop the cycle.” Hope and honesty appear in the final scene when everything is literally laid out on the table, and the suffocating feeling that has run throughout is finally lifted in the very last moment, when the rain stops falling.

The production features the original cast and creative team from the triumphant season at last year’s Adelaide Festival, including the strange and beautiful designs of visual artist Hossein Valamanesh, and composer Quentin Grant’s beguiling score which is performed live on stage.

 Until June 13. Sydney Opera House. $30-85, 9250 1777 or sydneytheatre.com.au 

Photo by Wend Lear

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