When the Rain Stops Falling

Andrew Bovell's latest play is a theatrical Rubik's cube, mixing things up between London and Australia, four generations, and seven major characters, most of whom have the name 'Gabriel'. It withholds its secrets with consummate use of suspense, and when all the facets align it will knock your socks off; it may even restore your faith in the possibilities of theatre.

At its heart is the quest by a young Englishman, Gabriel Law (Yalin Ozucelik), who visits central Australia in 1988 in the footsteps of the father who mysteriously ran off 18 years earlier. Gabriel seeks explanation and healing; he ultimately gets the first, but the other won't be forthcoming until 50 years have elapsed. By then - 2039, to be exact - global warming has raised the sea levels, drowning and displacing millions. Even Alice Springs is flooding, and it's here that Gabriel York (a wonderfully bereft Neil Pigot) is wondering what he can serve his estranged son Andrew for lunch when a fresh fish falls to earth at his feet - a double miracle, as fish are practically extinct. (In the play, hope is the thing with gills.)

Meanwhile, back in 1959, rain falls hard on London as a young married couple, Henry and Elizabeth (Pigot and Michaela Cantwell) discuss the helplessness of mankind in the face of nature's fury, humanity's propensity for over-consumption, and an unwanted pregnancy. Parts of the play also take place in the Coorong, where a 24-year-old orphan named Gabrielle (Anna Lise Phillips) has a fateful encounter with the English Gabriel ("what are the odds?") in a roadhouse. Twenty-five years after that, in Adelaide, Gabrielle (Kris McQuade) is losing her marbles while her husband Joe (Paul Blackwell) looks on helplessly.

The play's theme is inherited suffering - both within the family and in the broader sense of global environmental degradation. Its masterstroke is the fluid overlap of different generations on the one stage, ensuring that past and future continually haunt the present. This is a very simple trick, and one that can only work in the theatre. Elegantly directed by Chris Drummond, who conceived it after reading Tim Flannery's The Future Eaters, the play has evocative sets by the artist Hossein Valamanesh and a lyrical, mostly live score written and performed by Quentin Grant. But the show belongs to Bovell, who wields the story's symmetries, ironies and images with a mathematical ingenuity that Professor Rubik would admire.

This is a play of astonishing ambition and emotional power that unfolds over two hours and ten minutes without an interval but seems to go by in flash. Originally staged at last year's Adelaide Festival to great acclaim, When the Rain Stops Falling has been brought to Sydney by Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton as a tasty sideshow to the Sydney Theatre Company's 2009 program. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be the main event. Nick Dent