The end-of-year break is one that all students look forward to, it is Christmas and the time when families are likely to head off on a holiday together. Transporting the audiences to a caravan park, grand hotel and beautiful beach is the classic play Away, showing at Canberra Rep Theatre on 6-21 September.
“You can almost hear the waves, hear the cicadas, smell the sausages cooking at the campsite next to you. There’s something really familiar about the great Australian holiday,” Says Lainie Hart, director.
Written by Michael Gow in the 1980s and set towards the end of the 1960s, Away follows three families on a journey of grief, connection, healing and hope. A decade of much-loved fashion and tunes, Ms Hart says it was a fascinating time.
“Also, historically it is an interesting time in Australia’s history with the Vietnam War going on, conscription was happening, we’d had a referendum, lots was happening in human rights and feminism,” says Ms Hart.
The story brings together three families from different classes and backgrounds. The lower-class family have immigrated from England and are trying their hardest to create happy memories for their teenage son during their camp stay on the beach. The middle-class family come from poverty and has fought their way to their class status, they take up residence at the caravan park where tension is rife between parents and their teen daughter. The upper-middle-class family, the school principal and his wife, are staying at a nice hotel, grappling with the loss of their son.
“Three families go off on their separate holidays but end up together on the beach and each family is wrestling with loss and change. Each of the families is doing their best but not doing it well, they are all kind of wrestling with it as individuals but not together,” says Ms Hart.
Normally on stage rather than directing it, Ms Hart says it felt like the time was right for her to take the director seat. She was in a space where she felt like she could bring something more to the table and was inspired by plays of all kinds.
“I am always interested in plays that have psychological themes that are about relationships, about people coming together in the theatre to watch something around human nature or what happens to humans,” she says.
Away offered Ms Hart all those things whilst also tying in another great love, the Australian landscape. Ms Hart says Australian storytelling is still in a time of finding our own voice, influenced by American and British classics but there is one big character that we can offer that they can’t – our beautiful landscape.
“Away is very much about needing to get into the natural environment to heal and process. If you’re stuck inside your normal routine, you can’t do that.”
As a tragicomedy, the audience will be led through light-hearted moments of joy and laughter and also times of sadness and reflection. Ms Hart says it is lined with real moments that can move real people.
“The play is about ultimately, how families need to come together to get through difficult times… It is a play about hope, a play about change, and coming through being isolated in grief to feeling like you can have renewal at that end of that.”
Find an escape in Away at Canberra Rep Theatre on 6-21 September; canberrarep.org.au
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