Wednesday, 22nd June 2022 at 1:06pmWhen the Rain Stops Falling: A theatre review

What destroys us? Often it’s not the presence of something, but rather its absence. The chasm that a father’s abandonment leaves in his son, for example, doesn’t just remain quietly empty–it fills with darkness which overflows and colours the boy’s life.

The profound elucidation of this is what gives the Company of Players’ production of When the Rain Stops Falling by Andrew Bovell its special power.

The play, which ends its sold-out 9-day run at The Little Theatre in Hertford, on Thursday, June 16, proves itself a high-water mark in small venue staging.

When the Rain Stops Falling, which had its UK debut in 2009, spans four generations, moving from a cramped London flat to the wind-lashed coast of southern Australia and into the solitude of the Australian desert.

It braids together seven peoples’ stories, exploring how individual choices and actions corrupt bloodlines, unresolved ache trickling inexorably down from father and mother to child to grandchild.

The performances are stellar, the most moving by Paul Russell and Hazel Halliday who, portraying the married couple of Joe Ryan and Gabrielle York, display palpable fondness for each other.

The accomplished director, Laura Ilinca–a Romanian native whose short film The Apartment won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film festival–displays masterful control. You sense her deep understanding of the material and never doubt her choices as she leads you through a production that achieves the poignancy and uneasy closeness of a Pinter staging.

There’s great anticipation as to what project Laura takes on next. She is a director to watch.

The play’s most affecting line, which reduces the story down to its essence, comes from Laurence Lowe, who plays Gabriel Law, the deserted son of a lost father:

“I remember him because he wasn’t there.”

For more on the Company of Players and its future performances, please visit: https://www.cops.org.uk/