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September/October 1976

Directed by Julie Fuad

By David Storey

SETTING

The present

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

Mental institutions have been fascinating playwrights and film directors for years. (Remember the mad woman in a squeaking rocking chair in Suddenly Last Summer?).

Peter Weiss's Marat Sade, Durrenmatt's The Physicists , Arthur Kopit's Chamber Music are just a few modern plays that use an asylum for their subject matter. And, of course, this year's Award winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest reinforces the theme on exploration of inmates and conditions of institutional life.

Home, however, takes a slightly different stance. It tries to get behind the obvious mental condition, and probes the lonely of the desperate attempt of people to communicate and form some sort of stable relationship with one another.

The two men find enormous consolation in their cliche-laden interchanges and loyally rescue each other from faux-pas and inadequacies. However, unlike the two women, they are quite unable to face the reality of where they are and why.

The women, on the other hand, play off and against each other in a very basic, often destructive way which is more honest but no less pathetic than the vulnerably thin web of security constructed by Jack.

The couples pair off, split, come together, part, all within the confines of a brilliant dialogue that is sparse, comic, moving and sad.

CAST

Harry: David Rummery
Jack: George Pittendrigh
Kathleen: Aline Christenson
Marjorie: Marcia Sims
Alfred: Murray Coward

CREW

Director: Julie Fuad
Prompt: Lenore Crocker
Costumes: Enid Isaacs
Lighting: Harry Wadleigh
Stage Manager: George Wray
Set design and construction: Tim Clark
House Manager: Ron Vickress, Wal Rummery
Photography: Rob Heyman Curly's Arcade

THANK YOU

Alpha Furnishers for loan of furniture, ABC, 2AD, The Armidale Express, The New Englander, Judith Morsley’s Bookshop, Armidale Arts Festival Committee