Reviews Gate
Timothy Ramsden

October 2003 (online)

Families have always been drama's crucible-in-chief for conflict, while theatre's also thrived on essential dilemmas: friend v lover, friend/lover v duty/ personal v political.

Nabokov theatre have brought from Edinburgh their Australian house-playwright's examination of a split family thundered further apart by political action.

Retired teacher John Allthorpe (David Farrington initially a bit too much of a good-guy thing, all smiles, but developing a less composed aspect) welcomes his grown son back from the USA, David Abeles giving this character an American confidence and youthful energy, which later comes under a shadow as his true state's revealed. David's attracted to young Rebekah, though she seems - despite a reservation over his way of thinking that finally seems severely understated - even more attracted to him.

But her mother, a left wing academic, is David's long-pent bete-noire. He sees her as wrecker of his first home, till a new light's cast on his father's role in the break-up of his first marriage - something that opens up unexplored aspects to Allthorpe's character.

Lois Norman's perfect as the politically agitating, personally agitated academic. Fretting about the world while her formerly active husband peels the spuds, she might never have smiled, and gives the impression in her straight-backed smartness of finding capitalist conspiracy in the slightest remark.

But her love for Rebekah's shown first and last as she cradles the child twice hurt by terrorist bombs - directly at first, then indirectly. For the message she gave her daughter through the years was different from what she'd thought. Mother's talking had always turned out useless. So daughter looked to other means for bringing about the new Jerusalem (possibly a poor image of a perfect society under current circumstances).

Badham's not very convincing on the mechanics of bomb-plots, and her language falls into banality at the final crisis. She's more convincing on the way ideas are distorted through needing emotionally-fraught people to express and effect them. She vividly shows the conundrum that violent action can be necessary, but remains destructive. Her play's form - a lot of talk and apparent focus on personal relationships ending explosively - mirrors the point that careless talk can unpredictably cost lives.

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