Written by Jon Glass and directed by Garreth Cruikshank, this is an enjoyable social satire.
Set in contemporary Australia, it interrogates the relationships within a privileged family.
Rebecca (Alexandra O’Brien) is a corporate lawyer and her husband Oliver (Barret Griffin) is a writer who suffers from the luxury of writer’s block. Their daughter Chloe (Rhiannon Jean) has won a place at Oxford, studying Comparative Literature.
Of these familial relationships, only that between father and daughter appears amiable.
Several factors add to the tension. Chloe has hooked up with a new guy, Josh (Angus Farrand) and as boyfriends go, it would probably be better if he did. Simultaneously supporting the family and having their own expectations are longtime friends Mark (Cruikshank) and his terminally ill partner Anne (Sally Williams).
For the most part, the characters are selfish and/or stupid, and so are alternatively amusing or pathos-inducing. There are some terrific one liners, but I was uncertain whether I was watching a comedy or a drama – a result of both the writing and the performance choices. At times too slow for comedy and at others too hyperbolic for drama, the work exists in a disturbing liminal space, one wonderfully appropriate for eliciting discomfort in an audience whose world is possibly not too dissimilar from that of the characters. (Adherence to the conventions of genre is one way we guide our audience through a production, but a single-minded insistence on these conventions is also how we attempt to tame the revitalising wildness of the theatrical experience.)
The final scene tries to do too much: too quickly solving dilemmas which were, admittedly, never sufficiently fleshed out. However, in its emphasis on reconciliation, the piece takes part in the grand tradition of comedy, while also challenging us to find room in our reality for this golden but oft forgotten value.
Paul Gilchrist
The Department of Family Values by Jon Glass
The Greek Theatre
21st to 24 Aug (This run has been completed)
Image by Garreth Cruikshank
Theatre Red 
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