The Good Son

Though a family may strive to be a healthy, functional, organic being that nourishes its inhabitants and encourages growth, sometimes a family becomes a series of traps, little more than a poisonous snake than is driven to devour its young before swallowing its own tail. The Good Son is a riveting, believable, tremendously impressive depiction of such a family.

More than anything, this debut work from playwright and actor Elena Carapetis is surprising, not just for its confidence and assurance but also for the ease with which it sets up audience expectations in the first twenty minutes and then proceeds to subvert them for the next fifty. Just when you're settling in for an accomplished but lightweight cultural-quirk comedy, you discover that the director and writer have got you in a vice and are mercilessly turning the screws.

The technicians and designers responsible for the look and feel of The Good Son have subtly supported the text, leaving attention-getting effects to a minimum but making them count when needed. Jason Sweeney's use of sound is creative and intriguing, Manda Webber & Olivia Zanchetta's set is superbly detailed and authentic, while Ben Flett & Alexander Ramsay's lighting brings just the right evocative touch to the proceedings.

Renato Musolino upholds his stellar track record on stage with an enormously empathic portrayal of the title role. Eugenia Fragos - playing his mother - is given a most challenging character who could easily come across as simply demonic and despicable, but director Corey McMahon has made sure the performance is pitched at a realistic level, and the result is a sad and complex portrait of a woman whose choices in life will come at great cost to those around her.

Adriana Bonacurso is unforgettable in the role of a scarred survivor who is virtually the only character strong-willed and self-aware enough to retain complete respect and dignity by the end. Demitrios Sirilas rounds out a superb ensemble cast, providing the kind of darkly comic relief that keeps an audience pleasurably off-balance and guessing until the end just how things are going to turn out...

If The Good Son can ultimately be described as an addiction drama, then it is almost certainly unlike any of those that you may have seen before, because it is genuinely funny at times, as well as being deeply felt in its thematic concerns, not merely an old-fashioned morality play or socially-conscious-slice-of-life. It is fully deserving of the three ovations that were demanded of the cast on opening night.

Anthony Vawser