When the Rain Stops Falling

If it weren’t for Norman Doyle, Brisbane Arts’ When the Rain Stops Falling would be just another community theatre production. As it was, his sensitive performance as Gabriel York/Henry Law elevated the production of this complex play to a higher level.

Andrew Bovell’s award-winning work, one of the best Australian plays of the last decade, continually shifts time in its examination of abandonment, loss, isolation and identity within four generations of family over an eighty-year period.

Although the narrative threads kept overlapping, director John Boyce always made the author’s intent clear, helped in this endeavour by the committed work of Doyle who commandeered attention whenever he was on stage.

Jonathon Devitt as Gabriel Law (and Andrew Price) was also a strong and believable young Brit in his search for answers as to why his father walked out on the family when he was six. John Benetto’s Joe managed to find sympathy for a man who gives everything to his partner but still comes off second-best.

Jessica Wake brought some much needed fire to the young Elizabeth Law in the second act, Sarah Britton was an unsympathetic older Gabrielle York, Claire Argente suffered from poor projection as the younger Gabrielle York, whilst Georgia Kaytos’s older Elizabeth Law continually let the side down with her stagey ‘acting.’

Chancie Jessop’s set looked good with its half-moon steeply-raked platform, but in performance was a touch impractical with so many entrances and exits having to be made traversing the expanse of plywood.

But it was Doyle’s play. He set the standard and it was his performance that stood out.

Peter Pinne