State Theatre Company presents The Children
I don’t know how to want less.
In a small English coastal cottage, former nuclear scientists Hazel and her husband Robin are enjoying a quiet retirement, despite living just outside the exclusion zone of a dangerously crumbling nuclear power plant.
She practices her yoga, while he tends to his cows and, bar the rolling blackouts, their lives seem mostly untouched by the chaos outside – until a visit from an old friend and colleague with hidden intentions shakes their peaceful existence, forcing them to confront their secret jealousies and their past and future.
From award-winning playwright and “the most rewarding dramatist of her generation” (The Independent) Lucy Kirkwood, The Children is a storm-gathering exploration of survival, desire, friendship and duty, premiering in Adelaide following acclaimed productions in London, New York, Melbourne and Sydney.
A trio of Australia’s most celebrated and beloved actors – Tina Bursill (Doctor Doctor, The Moodys), Genevieve Mooy (Wellmania, The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race) and Terence Crawford (1984, Girl From The North Country) – grace the stage in this tender and provocative production directed by Corey McMahon (The Bleeding Tree).
Like HBO’s Chernobyl and in the tradition of our other recent climate change-focused work like Hibernation, The Children grapples with seismic questions about the future of the planet and the moral dimensions of humanity. What responsibility does each generation have for the next?
