"Things I Know To Be True". Grove Theatre

Things I Know To Be True is a tsunami-level emotional experience. But it’s more than that. It’s a significant step forward in the history of student theatre at Oxford.

For the first time, Magdalen College has opened up its theatre for use by OUDS, the Oxford University Dramatic Society. This is important, because most student drama happens in either the Burton Taylor Studio or the Pilch: tiny, black-box spaces ideal for experimental pieces. The other regular venue is Keble’s O’Reilly, which is large and adaptable. But none of these is a ‘traditional’ big theatre, with a proscenium arch, wings and full-size audience. And when student production companies get to the Oxford Playhouse, the challenges are enormous because the environment is so different from what they’re used to.

The Grove Theatre at Magdalen is the ideal stepping-stone between the Burton Taylor and the Playhouse. And Lighthouse Productions have risen to the challenge of a large-scale space with imagination, style and smooth adaptability.

Essentially, what they have done is turn the Grove into a real theatre. Things I Know To Be True has by far the most complex and imaginative set design I’ve ever seen in Oxford outside of the Playhouse. It’s a family drama, and to represent that, designer Erin Cook has created a home: the side of a house no less, with gauze panels between the upright planks of wood. Onto those panels are projected evocative, animated images of a tree growing and shedding its leaves. And at other times, lights shine through the panels from behind, illuminating ghostly images of members of the family, recalled through childhood anecdotes. Around the house, expressionistic piles of greenery double as hedgerows and chairs. And even on the way in, the audience passes through a series of suspended playing cards illustrated with scenes from Alice in Wonderland, leading us in to the theme of surreal catastrophe that dominates the play.

Patryk Wisniewski’s subtle lighting shifts the mood from oppressive, nighttime confessions to harsh, morning-after daylight with gentle nudges of colour that add life, rather than melodrama, to the revelations pouring off the stage.

And it’s in this capturing of life, this deft avoidance of melodrama, that Things I Know To Be True really leaves its devastating mark.

Directors Alys Young and Ivana Clapperton could so easily have made this an over-the-top, two-dimensional parody of serious drama. The script concerns a working-class Australian family led by retired car construction worker Bob (Sam Gosmore) and nurse Fran (Lucía Mayorga). Their grown-up children each has a major life issue to address, and the play takes us through their harrowing stories one at a time. The youngest, Rosie (Hope Healy) has been abandoned by the man she thought was the love of her life, and doesn’t know what to do with her future. Her brother Ben (Ediz Ozer) works for a financial firm, but is embezzling money and spending it on fast cars and hard drugs. Sister Pip (Gabriella Ofo) wants to abandon her own children and husband to go and live in Vancouver with a married man. And the final sibling Mark (Alexis Wood) has to tell her old-fashioned-but-well-meaning parents that she is in fact trans, and will be leaving for a new life as Mia.

Everywhere you look in Andrew Bovell’s passionate play there are huge issues to be confronted. It’s like Jacqueline Wilson for grown-ups. But Clapperton and Young have identified the humanity beneath those issues, and it’s the humanity that breaks over the audience like a tidal wave. Bob holding a phone and staring mutely at the tragic news coming down the line. Rosie quietly drawing up her knees in defence as her brother confesses his crimes. Mia squeezing one more dress into her humble suitcase, rolled and stuffed, not folded neatly. Pip looking out beyond the audience into the pain of her own upbringing. From every member of this superlative cast, the details are underplayed but perfectly stressed. The ensemble don’t force-feed us their tragedies. They drip-feed. And as a result, we hunger for more. Even the sound design has a delicate aura of yearning, with gentle piano music underscoring many of the monologues: not drowning them out, but complementing them with nostalgic melody.

Because of this beautifully restrained staging, on those rare occasions when tempers do boil over – for example, when Bob, on discovering his son’s criminal activity, screams ‘FUCK YOU!’ at him over and over again – the impact is all the more shattering. Not every family has to deal with this many problems all at one time, but this is drama, not real life. If Shakespeare could do it in Timon of Athens, Bovell can do it in Adelaide. I cried at least a dozen times before the interval. Other, tougher souls may have held out longer. But in the final, tragic scene – which still manages to surprise you – the audience-wide weeping was audible. People didn’t walk away from Things I Know To Be True. They staggered.

And best of all, with this triumph under their belt, Lighthouse Productions can bid for the Playhouse next term. If they get there, one thing will be for sure: they know how to put on a big play.

Special notice: there’s a new feature on the President’s Husband’s Drama Reviews. If you click on the menuburger on the home page you can view the Hall of Fame – those productions that completely blew me away.