WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING

Weather With You

Black Swan State Theatre Company’s production of Andrew Bovell’s When The Rain Stops Falling plays at the Heath Ledger Theatre from Saturday, October 29, to Sunday, November 13. Tickets through bocsticketing.com.au.

It’s 2039 in Alice Springs; the cultural and economic heartland of a realigned Australia. A fish falls from the sky, signalling the great flood that has been threatening since 1959, many generations before. And so begins one of the most arresting theatre pieces ever penned by Australian hand.

Although globally renown for his film work - most notably the screenplays for Lantana and Strictly Ballroom - it’s the stage where Andrew Bovell calls home. It was his award winning play Speaking In Tongues (1996) which would evolve into Lantana, but it’s his most recent play When The Rain Stop Falling (1008) which has reaffirmed him as the dark prince of Australian theatre.

Premiered in Adelaide in 2008, When The Rain Stops Falling received the kind of universal praise reserved for a masterwork. And that it has become; a genuine theatre classic. This definitive staging would travel far and wide, to Sydney, Melbourne, London, New York and beyond, and be decorated with numerous awards. And now, in a new production directed by WA native Adam Mitchell, it finally comes to Perth.

“My initial thoughts...” Mitchell ruminates, of his reflections on the original production, “I found it incredibly moving. It kind of reminded me as to how powerful our art-form can be, and why we do what we do. It was an amazing coming together as an audience and really sharing this cathartic chaos together. It was a haunting, moving and magical night at the theatre. So I thought ‘great, I want to bring it to Perth’. From the outset, it’s the most accomplished play that I have read in the last decade; and I don’t say ‘Australian play’, I say ‘play’ in terms of world standings.”

Traversing four generations of the York family - between London, the South Australian coast and Alice Springs - When The Rain Stops Falling has been lazily labelled a climate change drama, but that only tells part of the story. Set to a backdrop of human migration at the hands of climate change, this is more definitively a very human story of four separate generations navigating lies, betrayal and deceit to come to the very same questions: ‘where do I come from, how do I fit into this world and how do I make sense of it’? And the result is one of the most engaging - and affecting - nights of theatre you’re likely to ever experience.

“It is massively epic - it’s absolutely an epic but, at the heart of it, it follows one family and you get to meet four different generations of the same family,” Mitchell says.

“You get is this incredible web; this amazing layering throughout the play, so it really allows the audience to get to know these people. It becomes a struggle between choices and a generation’s inability to act, and how that affects future generations.

“It’s about economy,” Mitchell concludes of Bovell’s uncanny ability to cut deep into the human narrative so poignantly. “In the course of three lines he can tell the whole history of a human being. It’s what comes between the lines that makes his work so, so powerful. I think that’s what it is; it’s his ability to say so much with so little. And of course his dialogue is incredible. [When The Rain Stops Falling] is certainly the most haunting piece of theatre I have witnessed in a long time. It’s a very moving piece - bring your tissues.”

_JULIAN TOMPKIN