FAMILY VALUES

Roger is turning 70. No gifts and no fuss. Quality family time. That’s all he wants from his wife Sue and their three children. Maybe some balloons. It is a party after all.

But Emily, Lisa and Michael have other ideas. Lisa is on a mission to save Saba, a detention centre escapee. All they need are the keys to dad’s holiday home and they’ll be on their way. Michael has found religion and is now following God’s plan. Emily’s marriage has fallen apart with new love found in Noeline, a Border Force boat Commander. A simple family birthday get together, right?

It’s like your worst family Christmas lunch where deeply held beliefs are pulled apart and long-held resentments resurface. Crackling dialogue, perceptive insight and fierce humour that skewers hypocrisy. Classic Williamson.

Creatives

Director Lee Lewis Set and Costume Designer Renée Mulder Lighting Designer Benjamin Brockman Composer/Sound Designer Tony Brumpton

Stage Manager Grant Gravener Assistant Stage Manager Bridget O'Brien

CAST

Saba Sepi Burgiani Michael Leon Cain Lisa Helen Cassidy Emily Amy Ingram Roger Peter Kowitz Noeline Jodie Le Vesconte Sue Andrea Moor

LOCATION

Queensland Theatre 78 Montague Road South Brisbane

DURATION

1 hour and 30 minutes with no interval.

Warnings

This play contains dead black outs and the use of balloons, one of which pops on stage.

The use of photographic or recording equipment is not permitted inside the theatre. PRODUCTION

David Williamson Writer

Family Values is a play about a family in turmoil.

In families there’s typically a lot of love and a lot of warmth but also sibling rivalry, parental tension and buried secrets and this family is no exception. They are gathered together to celebrate the birthday of their 70-year-old patriarch, retired Federal Court judge Roger Collins, but the arrival of a totally unexpected guest increases the normal family tensions tenfold. They are all forced to face a moral dilemma that’s faced so many over the centuries. Do we obey the law when the law itself is patently immoral or do we follow our conscience? For Roger, who has upheld the law all his life the dilemma is particularly acute, but his resolute wife Sue and his outspoken children ensure that dodging the issue is not an option. Family Values is essentially a drama but even in the direst of circumstances the antics of our species can’t help being often bizarrely funny. Welcome to the Collins family. Perhaps a little bit like yours.

— David

Lee Lewis Director

How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you understand who David Williamson is in the history of Australian theatre? You don’t of course. You just sit back and enjoy one of his plays. His writing is so discussed, examined, critiqued, disassembled and evaluated it’s enough to make you forget that his writing is just meant to be played. Often the scripts themselves are not great reads on the page. They are, instead, great invitations to actors to animate the words with all their craft, passion and humanity; to create great characters and let them rip. For all the precision of his writing, David offers such freedom to actors in creating the emotional life of their characters that the stories become like great big playgrounds filled with people we know.

Aye, there’s the rub… people we know. Watching a David Williamson play is a peculiarly Australian experience. A delightfully, frustratingly, shamefully, hysterically, confrontingly Australian experience. He sees us. He records us. He satirises us. He accuses us. He challenges us. He makes us laugh at ourselves. He has high hopes for us. He always has. He has known us, written us, longer than any other playwright in the country. In the world. Maybe it’s the fact that he still has hope that draws us back to David’s writing again and again. He’s not delusional — he sees our worst parts. But he has always believed in the possibility of change for the better. That belief sits at the heart of Family Values and is possibly why I love it so much.

Watching a David Williamson play is a peculiarly Australian experience. A delightfully, frustratingly, shamefully, hysterically, confrontingly Australian experience.

To create a state of the nation play set around a dining table in Ashgrove, to break our hearts, to tell us some home truths and most importantly make us laugh, all in ninety minutes, in real time… that is the craft of one of our greatest playwrights. But don’t take my word for it. Watch the play, it’s all in there. He didn’t write it for some director to bang on about, he wrote it for you, his beloved audience. It has been a real privilege to bring it to the stage with this gorgeous cast for you.

Enjoy.

— Lee