The Children, a play by the renowned British playwright Lucy Kirkwood, opens at the Heath Ledger Theatre in Northbridge, Perth, on 24 August 2024 and runs through 15 September 2024.
The play won a Tony Award Nomination for best play and was the winner of best play at the 2018 UK Writers’ Guild.
It has been a phenomenal success in the UK and New York and elsewhere, and is sure to be a success here too. You’ll want to book your tix sooner rather than later to avoid disappointment.
A short catchy account of The Children is ‘An Atomic Reckoning of Love and Legacy’. Clever!
In slightly longer hand the play is described as ‘an atomic drama about social responsibility, and what we leave behind for the generations that follow’.
In so many ways, it’s a play for our times.
From Left, Caroline Brazier, Humphrey Bower, Nicola Bartlett
Directed by Mel Cantwell for the Black Swan State Theatre Company, The Children – a three hander – stars Nicola Bartlett as Hazel, Humphrey Bower as Robin, and Caroline Brazier as Rose.
The story – which could easily have been set in Fremantle, with a nuclear submarine hub just across Cockburn Sound – goes like this. Robin and Hazel, two nuclear scientists, live a quiet existence in their isolated cottage on the coast. They’ve been there ever since the disaster. Electricity is rationed and radiation fills the air, but it’s peaceful.
That is, until old friend and colleague, Rose, arrives on their doorstep, bringing with her a past Robin and Hazel had tried to leave behind. Rose’s arrival stirs old emotions and unspoken love affairs, challenging the delicate balance of their lives. As secrets are revealed, Rose presents a frightening proposal that forces Robin and Hazel to confront both their personal responsibilities and their broader responsibilities to the world they have helped shape.
But the memories of unspoken love affairs are not nearly as challenging as Rose’s frightening proposal for their future …
Director, Mel Cantwell, notes that the play is fundamentally about responsibility – both collective and personal.
“The Children is a beautifully nuanced play that examines family, desire, friendship and morality. It’s an urgent story about the future, but deeply rooted in the here and now, with characters whose struggles and connections are universally relatable, while the play skilfully examines the legacies we leave behind: a topic that is more relevant now than
ever as we enter the nuclear debate.”
Readers won’t be surprised to learn the play was inspired by the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster of not so many years back, but it is much more than a nuclear fallout drama.
Nicola Bartlett
Our Editor, Michael Barker, was very pleased to catch up with Fremantle based Nicola Bartlett this week in the West End of Fremantle to make the wonderful podcast you will find below where we discuss The Children, responsibility, getting older, living with less, and so much more.
Nicola has been embedded in the performing arts industry in Australia for the last 35 years. After graduating from NIDA Nicola pursued a career in TV, film and stage acting and was involved in multiple projects, receiving the PAWA award for her role in Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia and appearing at the Rome, Sydney and Melbourne International Film festivals for her lead role in the feature film Little Sparrows.
Theatre acting credits include Antigone, The Cherry Orchard, Face to Face, Soul Mates, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Unexpected Man, Jimmy and Pat Meet the Queen, The Ghost’s Child, Old Love, Is This Thing On, Signifying Nothing (a winner at 2017 Adelaide Fringe Festival) and And I’m the Queen of Sheba.
Nicola’s television and film work include: Ship to Shore II, Parallax, Rapture of the Deep, Contagion, Three Acts of Murder, Sororal, The Reckoning, The Legend of Gavin Tanner, Antecedents, Factory 293, Whet, Council, Emerald Way and The Twelve (season 2) and has just wrapped on We Bury The Dead.
The Children
24 August to 15 September 2024
Heath Ledger Theatre
Black Swan State Theatre Company
Northbridge, Perth
Book here
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Here’s the PODCAST. Enjoy!
