KEY POINTS:
After the excesses of Christmas, we are implored to go bush or beach and forget about the world and its worries.
Those of us looking for amusement are assumed to want "entertainment lite": sitcom re-runs on TV, romantic comedies at the movies and trashy thrillers at the bookstores.
But there comes a moment when we crave meatier fare, according to Silo Theatre director Shane Bosher who is ready to dish something more substantive, even visceral, to open the Silo's 10th birthday season.
"You would assume audiences want to see light comedy at this time of the year but we've found work that explores contemporary reality does really well," he explains. "Around this time of the year we want to begin engaging with the world again."
If Bosher is right and audiences do want to engage with work that explores contemporary reality, you can't get much more recent or raw than the Silo's first production for the year, Dying City.
This production is only the play's second. It premiered at London's Royal Court last year and, although written by American Christopher Shinn, it does not begin a New York run till later in February.
Bosher says that's possibly because the issues dealt with are too confronting, particularly for mainstream American audiences.
It explores the possible legacies of war in Iraq, suggesting that personal morality has as much to do with the disastrous conflict as the actions of politicians, that political and personal abuses are two sides of the same coin.
Replete with ambiguities and shot through with black humour, Dying City is set in New York four years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Kelly (Dena Kennedy) is widowed after her husband, Craig (Edwin Wright), dies a mysterious death fighting in Iraq. Kelly is a therapist with answers for everyone else, but she is forced to confront her grief when Craig's identical twin brother, Peter, lands on her doorstep.
Self-obsessed and emotionally stunted, Peter is dealing with his own issues which are hinted at but never totally revealed.
"I thought it was the most challenging piece I'd done in the past five or so years," says Kennedy, "but now I'd say it's the toughest piece I've ever done. You have to confront how others deal with emotions that we don't think about on a day-to-day basis. It means going to a darker place, thinking about things we try to avoid."
Dying City is set in the United States and deals with a conflict in which New Zealand is not directly involved but Kennedy believes there is no escaping the legacy it has bequeathed the world.
That legacy remains difficult to grasp, given that there is no end in sight.
Wright, who plays both men, points out writing characters that are twins becomes a device to explore dualities; even the possible different decisions that could have been made.
Bosher deliberately picked Dying City partly because of the conundrums it poses.
"I don't like work that spoon-feeds an audience," he says. "I remember coming out of a Sydney Theatre production and hearing couples arguing about what was going on.
"I'm not saying I want to be in the business of ending other people's relationships, but if theatre opens people up and starts them discussing and thinking about issues, it's a good thing."
* Dying City is at Silo Theatre from February 7- March 3
