When the Rain Stops Falling at the Shaw Festival : This investigation of complex family secrets is Peter Hinton’s best work yet…
Photo Emily Cooper
Peter Hinton, artistic director of the English theatre at the National Arts Centre had his work cut out for him at the Shaw Festival with the staging of Andrew Bovell’s play When the Rain Stops Falling. The work is a complex investigation of family secrets, intimate tragedies, experiences of shame, despair and confused identities.
Gabriel Law (Jeff Meadows) sets out on a mysterious quest, trying to reconstitute the life of Henry, his father, played by Graeme Somerville with a sense of great tragic presence. Since his father disappeared when he was only seven years old, Gabriel knows nothing about him, and his mother (Donna Belleville as the older Elizabeth) refuses to speak of her husband. It quickly becomes clear that the family history, which crosses through several generations, moving back and forth from London England to Australia, is set out almost like a series of fragmented dreams, suggesting troubling secrets that the young man must bring to light and resolve, in order to come to terms with his own life.
Le Festival Shaw qui se déroule chaque année à Niagara on the Lake, au bord du Lac Ontario près de la frontière américaine, est le seul festival au monde consacré à l’œuvre de George Bernard Shaw et aux auteurs dramatiques qui ont émergé pendant son vivant (entre 1856 et 1950). Cette année, dans le cadre du Festival Shaw, Peter Hinton, directeur artistique du théâtre anglais au Centre national des Arts à Ottawa, a monté When the Rain Stops Falling (Lorsque la pluie s’arrête), par l’Australien Andrew Bovell. Cette première canadienne d’un auteur mieux connu chez nous pour ses scénarios cinématographiques (Strictly Ballroom) que pour ses pièces de théâtre, était une véritable découverte et surtout un défi que Peter Hinton a relevé avec brio.