In the dining room of a snug Eastern-suburbs home, a low-stakes family argument is happening. Sixteen-year-old Jenny wants to go glamping with her friends, but her mother, Ruth, wants her home for Ruth’s birthday celebrations. Step-dad, Reuben, is there to smooth things out, find some compromise, putting his political advisory skills into action. He’s trying to keep everybody happy.
But this minor family turmoil is about to be overshadowed by a bigger problem. Ruth’s son has been at a friend’s party, against her wishes, and he’s been arrested. Accused of sexual assault.
The accused
son stays off-stage for the entire show, because writer Jorja Bentley is
interested in exploring the fall-out for the rest of the family. How much
support do you give a child credibly accused of raping his girlfriend? How long
can you look for excuses for his behaviour? What kind of household has he been
raised in that could lead to this? It’s a rich source of drama. There are, of
course, no easy answers.
The main
source of conflict is mother and daughter. Anna, the survivor of the assault, is
close to the family. A friend of Jenny. But where Ruth is quick to jump to her
son’s defence, Jenny isn’t as willing to believe his side of the story. Jenny believes
Anna. She’s been raised to believe women and to be distrustful of men. It runs
in the family.
And when a
damning video surfaces, questions of innocence fall by the wayside. Ruth thinks
he must have been coerced into it. Reuben is doing a lot of ringing around,
trying to save face for his future political career. But the media hordes have
descended because he works for the local mayor, who has had his own drink
driving scandal recently. A story Reuben helped to cover up.
Ruth’s
sister, Sally, arrives to help support them all, but worries that the family is
cursed by genetics to be fuck-ups. Turns out this is the next step in a cycle
of family violence. Sally is ready to deal within the context of the broken family
she and Ruth escaped. Ruth, in her more comfortable life, refuses to let the
past catch up to her.
The set-up
of the play and the family dynamics are fascinating. A mother and teenage
daughter in conflict may be a truism, but Ruth is damaged by the past and Jenny
has a clear sense of modern morality. We hear a lot of stories about young men
getting leniency from their “one mistake” but Jenny has grown up in a world
where this has been fought and argued against. Her brother’s one mistake will
scar her friend forever.
Unfortunately,
the play that continues from this central premise ends up more and more
melodramatic. Where the relationship between Jenny and aunt Sally feels real,
the conflict of both with Ruth spirals out of control. Sally and Ruth argue
long into the night about the family history that has led them there, but Sally
seems fixated on their genes – as if blood has cursed them to never escape the
cycle of violence. Jenny chooses to leave the family home, but the arguments
with her mother just follow her there and there’s no sense of growth or change.
One of the
clear ideas the play tackles is about how much a family should be or feel
responsible for one another. How far do we go to protect blood kin? How long
should we feel accountable for those who have broken the law and ruined lives?
But it never wants to commit to the idea that sometimes it’s best to walk away
from toxic family. The text is hesitant about giving clear answers, understandably,
but that leads to arguments that run in circles.
The play gets
hung up on whether or not Ruth should be a character witness for her son, with
the idea that a mother’s support might sway the jury. Might she be able to
explain his acts away? Might she be able to convince them he’s really a good
boy, who had a bad night? Dramatically, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It speaks
to her inner turmoil, but the idea stretches credulity.
Other ill-conceived
details – like asking to sign divorce papers after ten months, or a joke about
missing people on milk cartons, or a teenage girl sitting on a table with her
shoes on – just took me out of the reality of these scenes. Playing one
dramatic confrontation between Ruth and Reuben at the extreme edge of the stage
made it feel like an aside, not a central piece of action.
Bethany J
Fellows’ set design - rows of curtains framing the action - gives the feeling
of voyeurism, while hinting at the notion of a picture frame around an ideal middle-class
life.
Mia Tuco’s
Jenny is an archetypal teenage girl who can talk in circles and baffle her parents, but she lets us
into her inner life. In contrast, Chris Koch’s mother feels almost robotic. At
moments, it’s understandable that Ruth is just going through the motions, but
for much of the play, I never really understood Ruth’s motivations or anything
beyond the moment she was playing. Lana Schwarcz is having a lot of fun as queer
sister, Sally, who knows everything about everyone and can cut to the heart of
each matter.
Blood in
the Water has a lot
to say about what must be a frighteningly regular family story; dealing with
the fallout of a son’s criminal actions. And because these stories have long
been framed as “who is telling the truth”, this angle feels fresh. How does a
family stay together after this kind of trauma?
The title alludes
to an image of the family being set upon; a shark attacks when it smells blood
in the water. But for all the conflict and trying to pull themselves apart,
Bentley’s play seems to settle on the old idea that "blood is thicker than water" –
and never really asks if that is true.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Blood in the Water is playing at La Mama Courthouse until June 30
Photos: Darren Gill
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