Written by: Nina Raine
Directed by: Ross Jolly
WINNER New York Critics Circle Theatre Award 2012 for Best Play
WINNER Outstanding Play, Drama Desk Award NY
WINNER Alliance Award New York for Best Play
Nominated Best Play Laurence Olivier Awards London 2011
A smart, highly original and funny new play, Tribes has wowed critics and audiences alike, enjoying smash hit seasons in London and New York, and winning a swathe of awards.
Billy’s ferociously intelligent and proudly idiosyncratic family are their own tiny empire. Dinner conversation is a no-holds-barred mayhem, where opinions, jokes and insults fly. But Billy, who is deaf, is the only one who really listens. Meeting Sylvia transforms his life, and makes him finally want to be heard. But can he get a word in edgeways?
“The best-written, best-plotted, deepest, most daring – and funniest – new play in recent years” – The Wall Street Journal
“As good as theatre gets. Don’t miss it” – The Australian
“At once funny and piercingly painful – four stars” – Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph
Starring
Jeffrey Thomas
Paul Waggott
Erin Banks
Nathan Meister
Emma Kinane
Jessica Robinson
06 April − 04 May
Tuesday and Wednesday 6.30pm
Thursday to Saturday 8pm
Sunday 4pm
Adults $46
Concessions $38
Friends of Circa (until 21 April) $33
Groups 6+ $39 Groups 20+ $36
Under 25s $25
$25 Preview Friday, 5 April and $25 Special Sunday, 7 April
Tribes demands attention
BY LAURIE ATKINSON, THE DOMINION POST, 08 MARCH 2013
At the start of Nina Raine’s absorbing and moving play Tribes I thought I was watching an updated comedy about an eccentric, self-absorbed, foul-mouthed, argumentative bohemian family like the Bliss family in Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, except Raine’s family are given no surname and it is set in North London rather than Berkshire.
Christopher is a writer and retired academic, his wife Beth is a novelist, and their three children, all in their twenties, are still living at home. Daniel has completed a thesis on the relationship between language and meaning. One of his first pronouncements is ‘Language is worthless.’ His sister Ruth is a would-be opera singer, singing in languages, which Daniel pointedly remarks, no one can understand.
The youngest member of this tribe is Billy who says little and seems to be largely ignored as the verbal missiles ricochet across the dining table. Billy is deaf which his family seem to disregard, unaware of his loneliness, and he survives with a hearing aid and being an expert lip-reader.
The outsider from another tribe who upsets the cosy imbalance of the family is Sylvia whom Billy has fallen in love with. She is the daughter of deaf parents and she herself is going deaf. We learn from her about the hierarchies of the deaf: to be born deaf is ‘superior’ to be slowly losing one’s hearing. Then Billy strikes out on his own, determined to use only sign language, much to his father’s disgust who always wanted Billy to be part of the mainstream.
Though Tribes may appear contrived, what with Daniel’s interest in language and the recurrence of his mental and physical problems which dovetail a little too neatly with the play’s themes about isolation, empathy, and the ways language in all its forms can impede communication, the play still holds the audience in an iron grip.
It is finely acted by Jeffrey Thomas as the determinedly non-PC father, Emma Kinane as his more reasonable if argumentative wife, Jessica Robinson as the daughter Ruth, and Nathan Meister in the ‘showier’ role of Daniel which he balances brilliantly on the fine edge between comedy and tragedy.
In the key roles of Billy and Sylvia, Paul Waggott and Erin Banks have never been better even though at times they were, ironically, a little too quietly spoken. Waggott’s transition from isolated young man to a man fired to take a stand to confused adult is never forced and is always perfectly tuned. Banks matches him with a touching performance and both make their use of sign language speak volumes.
OTHER REVIEWS
John Smythe, Theatreview, 08 April 2013
David Farrar, Kiwiblog, 08 April 2013
There will be a New Zealand Sign Language interpreted performance on Friday, 3 May. Please check out the video trailer for the NZSL performance on the right, or on Circa’s Youtube Channel.
Proudly supported by Peter and Mary Biggs
Warning: Contains Swearing
Running time 2 hours 20 minutes (including 15 minute interval)