Pamela Rabe, William Zappa and Sarah Peirse in Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company’s Production of The Children © Jeff Busby
Intriguing on several levels, this production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children is wonderfully realised and maintains its air of suspense and quiet menace throughout.
We meet jittery Hazel (Pamela Rabe) first. She’s in a modest cottage near the coast in England, on the edge of an exclusion zone mandated because of radiation in the area caused when an earthquake and tsunami damaged the nearby nuclear power station. It soon becomes clear that Hazel is hanging on to life (and youth) by any means possible – specifically yoga, routines that verge on OCD and massive denial. She is so spooked by the unexpected arrival of an old friend, Rose (Sarah Peirse), that her reflex is attack. Rose arrives on stage with a nosebleed, courtesy of Hazel.
Why has Rose come? This is a key question throughout and just as compelling as the overarching theme of mankind destroying the planet, in this case through the inadequate design and safety measures at the nuclear plant, which have allowed radiation to leak into the countryside and are about to allow it to contaminate the sea.
Sarah Peirse and Pamela Rabe discover you can’t always have what you want in The Children © Jeff Busby
Hazel’s compulsion to deny her mortality (she’s 67, and planning on another 30 years at least) is in direct contrast to the decay surrounding her and the reduced circumstances in which she and husband Robin (William Zappa) now live: rationed electricity means no fridge, no flushing toilet; and of course the tap water is unsafe. She refers to the fallout as the ‘disaster’, a handy euphemism and ironic, given that she, Rose and Robin are all nuclear scientists.
When Robin arrives he is also astonished to see Rose, who ostensibly has been absent from both their lives for 40 years. But it is not giving too much away to say that Rose and Robin have history, and that lots of dirty little secrets are about to leak out inside the cottage too. Regrets? They have a few.
It’s a clever play, dredging up questions of responsibility to the Earth, to each other, to generations to come. It provokes questions but, unlike other plays with similar messages, it never harangues.
The children of the title can mean those future generations who are dependent on our actions to safeguard that future – the “children” who are trying to stem the damage right now – but also the infantile behaviour of some ‘responsible’ adults, and the children of those adults. Hazel, for example, hides behind responsibilities of motherhood and continues to baby her daughter, who is now 38.
The affable Robin is in a lesser form of denial, trying to maintain that all is well on the farm they have left behind, but as the play progresses and Rose’s presence continues to disturb what’s left of Hazel and Robin’s ordered life, we come to understand what drives all three of them. “You can’t have everything you want, just because you want it,” says Rose, at one point. Hazel, who could be answering for Western consumers in general, doesn’t “know how to want less”.
The performances are superb, as you would expect from such seasoned actors, and Sarah Goodes’ direction is tight. The shabby cottage (set design Elizabeth Gadsby) is a perfect reflection of these three under-fulfilled lives. The question remains: “Who is going to clear up the mess?” The Children will keep you thinking, that’s for sure.
The Children is at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, until May 19.
