Synopsis
Hilary lives in seaside Sorrento with her father and sixteen-year-old son; Pippa is visiting from New York and Meg returns from England with her English husband. Three sisters, reunited after ten years in different worlds, again feel the constraints of family life. It is Meg’s semi-autobiographical novel, recently short-listed for the Booker prize, which overshadows their homecoming.
This lovely Australian classic is about expatriatism, our perception of home and the tensions that exist between those who’ve left and those who’ve stayed behind. It is about the responsibilities of family obligations and national ties, the rights to individuality within a clan and a country.
Warrandyte Theatre Company first staged this work shortly after it was written in 1990 and its subjects and characterisations have not aged. The focus on the family and the tensions arising from love, responsibility and guilt are as relevant today as they were 30 years ago. Similarly, the at-times, delightful and other times, frustrating contradictions inherent in Australian culture – from ‘having a go’ while cutting down ‘tall poppies’, to the obsession with certainty while celebrating exceptionalism – are still so present today.