Things I Know To Be True
Written by Andrew Bovell
Directed by Kate Champion
Starring Humphrey Bower, Caroline Brazier, Emma Jackson, Kaz Kane, Will O’Mahony, Laura Shaw
Black Swan Theatre Company, Perth
At the State Theatre Centre until June 18, 2023

The family unit is both the bane and the consolation of so many people’s lives. It is the centre within which we learn about love and the cocoon from which we achieve our individuality.

And, as is shown in Things I Know To Be True, it is also where we learn to support others while they go through life’s sufferings, rising above our own thoughts and feelings – or failing to.

In the opening moments a young character stands desolately on a Berlin train platform, gazing out at her bittersweet gap-year journey of independence and self-discovery. As she soliloquies a word escapes her lips, encapsulating the depth of her longing, a word that perfectly situates this play in social and class terms for Perth audiences: Booragoon.

Booragoon is the opposite of exciting. It is the classic working-class suburb where retired workers tend their rose gardens and slow down after a life of toil.

It is where a long-suffering wife might reflect on choices where she passed by romantic opportunities, adult children might or might not exercise freedom and a loving father might realise his failings.

Booragoon is south of the Swan River, where the expression “the other side of the river” invokes private school education and elite privilege, referred to in one of the play’s key moments.

It is where backyards are the centre of much that matters, like barbeques with the grandkids, engagement parties and even weddings. So it is for the Price clan in this tender examination of four seasons of a family’s life with the play revolving around their kitchen and yard.

Expertly scripted by Andrew Bovell (known for his film, Lantana and as co-writer of Strictly Ballroom), the play reveals times when comfortable assumptions unravel and bonds of affection are stretched.

Amongst poignant and hilarious moments, there is unsentimental truthfulness when issues of gender roles, gender identity and social envy are faced. Characters do not always say the right thing.

Are the Price parents, Bob and Fran, sinking into aimlessness or, frightened to face up to changes in their roles as their children mature are they smothering them with love? Wounding words are spoken as people find their way through the thicket of their emotions.

Things I Know To Be True demonstrates how powerful and honest theatre can be. On opening night there were audience members in tears.

It will be interesting to see the play’s next iteration. Nicole Kidman has secured the rights for a TV adaptation for Amazon Prime Video, giving herself the lead role of the Price family matriarch, Fran.

The extended format will allow for more depth in the examination of such things as transphobia and the social conventions of mothering and fathering. In the meantime, Things I Know To Be True remains as Nicole Kidman described it “one of those transcendent theatre experiences.”