REPLAY

As a child, John saw his brother die. His other brother saw it too, but remembers things quite differently. They are forced to dredge up their competing pasts in search of a common truth – yielding terrifying, unexpected consequences.

The past is what you make it in Replay, this newly devised work of Australian theatre penned by forthcoming playwright Phillip Kavanagh.

“It’s a play that is exploring ideas around memory and how the way we remember our past shapes who we are in the present,” Kavanagh enthused when talking ahead of the season. “Specifically looking at that through the prism of sibling relationships, [people] who share the same foundational history, but as adults they may have ‘narrativeised’ their pasts differently, and what happens when they have to come to terms with reaching a consensus about what really occurred and the events that have shaped them.”

Kavanagh was initially interested in memory – collective memory, the fallibility of memory – and to him an exploration of sibling relationships went hand in hand.

Kavanagh feels that this brotherly bond has been built and portrayed well amongst the cast of three on stage, with much of the quirky source material coming from his own childhood.

Originally developed as a short play for his study at NIDA, Replay was soon picked up by Griffin Theatre, a move which Kavanagh credits as allowing him “to push the themes and ideas further and deeper rather than ‘padding them out’ to fill a full length play”.

He added: “It’s great that we have a home for Australian writing, and that’s what Griffin offers the country.” (AM)

Until May 7, Mon–Fri 7pm, Sat 2pm + 7pm. SBW Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross. Tickets & info: griffintheatre.com.au

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