Tell Me I’m Here
Veronica Nadine Gleeson’s powerful new play is an adaptation of Anne Deveson’s applauded book about finding a way through her son’s schizophrenia.
The late well-known journalist battled an astonishing professional ignorance about Jonathan’s condition, and a system which left him only to the care of police and homeless shelters.
Nadine Garner plays Anne impeccably, as stoic, unsentimental but intensely loving and patient, and beautifully appreciative of her son’s sometimes smart left-field thinking. And you can see why in Tom Conroy’s superlative physical and vocal performance of Jonathan.
Even as a toddler, he twists his body and his words strangely, later screaming at demons, always running, sometimes oddly formal and insightful, before the rage returns. Conroy allows us to engage with Jonathan – and that’s not easy with characters locked in inaccessible mental anguish (King Lear aside!).
Gleeson duplicates Deveson’s book with a multitude of fast scenes, tracing her family life through two husbands, living between Sydney and Adelaide, her career, her two other children – and Jonathan. And we meet some well-sketched characters.
Some scenes could be compounded into longer, yet more intense chapters, but director Leticia Caceres sets a cracking pace and has assembled an able flexible cast.
Jana Zvedeniuk and Raj Labade are Jonathan’s exasperated but loyal siblings. Sean O’Shea finely plays the two remote husbands and, with Deborah Galanos, all double expertly in other roles.
Stephen Curtis creates a suitably bookish wall and table in an otherwise stark empty white space, on which Jonathon is always drawing. He suicided at the age of 23. It’s a compelling, heart-felt story.
Martin Portus
Photographer: Brett Boardman.
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