SMALL AND TIRED
Orestes has come back to bury his father. He has been away a long time. His mother is hardened, his sister is strangely ill. He will see them, he will bury his father and then, in all likelihood, he will drift away again. But in a bar one night, slightly drunk, he meets a gentle soul called Pylades…
Small and Tired sets up a brilliant moral challenge for its characters: to love in spite of all the shit. The play springs from the myth of Orestes and the House of Atreus, but Brookman’s completely disarming leap of imagination has been to fully dissolve the myth into the contemporary world.
The result is a small play which echoes large – about restlessness and modern love, about the rootlessness of the times, about the brokenness of our sense of family and humanity. At its heart is the startling idea that love is an ancient thing we have to learn and re-learn from generation to generation.
All photographs by Brett Boardman
WORLD PREMIERE
Belvoir St Theatre
26 September - 3 November 2013
Written and directed by Kit Brookman
Set and costume design: Mel Page
Composition and sound design: Tom Hogan
Lighting design: Verity Hampson
with Tom Conroy, Paul Gleeson, Sandy Gore, Luke Mullins and Susan Prior
*Small and Tired was shortlisted for the 2012 Griffin Award.
*Nominated for three 2013 Sydney Theatre Awards including Best New Work, Best Actor (Luke Mullins)
*Winner Sydney Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress (Susan Prior)
*Nominated for Best Supporting Actress 2013 Helpmann Awards (Susan Prior)
REVIEWS
“Like watching a casually Australian version of the great French neo-classicist Racine. The surface is restrained, but something is burning fiercely underneath.”
- John McCallum, The Australian
"Kit Brookman's exquisite play on modern love and Ancient Greece... Small and Tired is neither small nor tired in its reach, imagination and achievement... Kit Brookman has done something special with this production: savour if you can."
- Diana Simmonds, Stage Noise
"Brookman's drama maintains a painstakingly prosaic and truthful tone throughout. A dry humour pervades though there are passages of striking lyricism, too. He has an excellent cast at his disposal and in this intimate space, they generate delicately detailed and shaded characters."
- Jason Blake, Sydney Morning Herald
*Follow links to full reviews.