Review: When the Rain Stops Falling at Herald Theatre

'When the Rain Stops Falling' actor Tandi Wright shows hopeful energy as 50s housewife Beth. Photo / Andrew Malmo

God, this is bleak - fabulously so. An excellent production of a near-brilliant epic, it piles aching misery on tragic crisis on disturbing horror. Australian playwright Andrew Bovell pushes past family melodrama to find something so dark it makes Arthur Miller's characters seem self-indulgent and screechy.

Under the accomplished direction of Shane Bosher, When the Rain Stops Falling requires very little shouting to layer on the tension. Instead, parents and children don't talk to each other because they have too much to say.

Bad things happen in the Outback (really, English tourists should know better than to go there by now). The climactic scene, bathed in blood-red light, set my heart racing. The play doesn't deserve such a soppy name.

Moving back and forth in time, the play briefly frames its generations of absent fathers and trapped mothers against a backdrop of increasing ecological disaster. Bovell makes the point that the end of the world seems more likely than the end of voracious consumer capitalism. But as Gabrielle (Jude Gibson) says: "It's only life and I've had a miserable one and I've had enough of it." In this world, grief is worse than death.

Gibson wears Gabrielle's earthy anger and disappointment well; Tandi Wright is a bright spot of articulate, hopeful energy as 1950s wife Beth. Stephen Lovatt is particularly impressive, giving a tour de force performance as the flashing-eyed Englishman Henry and his wan, shuffly grandson 80 years later.

Cleverly, Jeremy Fern's trompe l'oeil projections make it look like it's raining puddles on the table and John Verryt's set is cracked across the middle, by lightning perhaps.

This feels like an Auckland Theatre Company production in Silo Theatre branding - a reflection of the choice of play, the relatively large cast of seven and the involvement of veteran stalwarts both onstage and backstage.

There's a small ray of hope at the end which many may enjoy - but, luckily, it's easily ignored. Embrace the nihilism.

When the Rain Stops Falling is on at the Herald Theatre, The Edge, until July 3.