Sharply scripted drama shines a light on deeply flawed and very human characters.
In what is becoming a specialty for Auckland Theatre Company, Colin McColl has discovered another superb piece of contemporary theatre that plunges us into the miasma of recriminations, secrets, remorse and abiding love that make family dramas so compelling.
In Jon Robin Baitz's script the family functions like the Large Hadron Collider, allowing us to observe the fallout from lives propelled into an extreme emotional velocity and thrown together in a series of explosive and deeply revealing collisions.
Set amid the opulent decadence of Palm Springs, the play explores the fractious politics of the invasion of Iraq with a sharply scripted and often very funny squabble between blue-haired Republicans and cultured liberals.
But rather than rehashing old arguments the play challenges the contemporary malaise in which political debate is paralysed by the lazy assumption that once you know someone's political opinions you automatically know what kind of person they are.
