Members of the RCN Theatre EAC group presented ‘Things I Know To Be True’ on Saturday night in the Høegh. The story of an Australian family, the Prices, the theatre company Frantic Assembly’s interpretation of Andrew Bovell’s original script was brought to life by a truly outstanding cast co-directed by first year students Beth (UK) and Ingebjørg (Norway), both of whom received a standing ovation and bouquets at the close.
The story is told through the eyes of the four grown-up Price siblings: Rosie (Helene -Norway) the drifting, wannabe creative writer whose heart is broken during a whirlwind romance in Berlin; Pip (Magdalena – Austria) the hard-working daughter who leaves her husband and children to start a new life – almost certainly doomed – with a married man in Vancouver; Mark (Jack – UK) the son who has always felt the least-loved, who leaves home to begin a new life in Sydney transitioning from Mark to Mia; and Ben (Oskar – Denmark), the hard-living accountant who wants to fit in with his rich, privately educated colleagues and steals money to try to do so.
This story of love, marriage, missed life chances, despair, theft, identity, sex and death had the audience cheering ecstatically (and crying profusely) at the end of the show. Arran (Canada) as the father, Bob and Ea (Denmark) as the mother, Fran, struggled to understand how their plans and dreams for their children could be taken from them or fall apart in front of their eyes.
Arran brought a totally believable fatherly confusion and anger to play; Ea’s Fran, sneaking off for a rare cigarette, admitting she had had the chance to start a new life with another man, had “settled for” Bob but could barely understand how or why – totally true to life. In the end, falling asleep at the wheel after a long shift at the hospital where she works, Fran is killed, her death the defining familial moment, that least unexpected phone call that could, ironically, bring the family together – if only in helpless grief.
Pete Wilson, long-standing IB Theatre teacher at RCN, took time to congratulate the two directors and individual members of the cast after the performance and informed each one in turn that, for him, this had been the most moving, professional, well-directed and wholly absorbing student production he had seen at the College.
(For more pictures, click here.)
