Children Of The Sun

16 September 2014 | 11:26 am | Dave Drayton

"The drama feels at times a little selfish while the comedy rides high."

Director Kip Williams has brought Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Children Of The Sun to Sydney audiences with a significantly reduced cast size, down to 12 from 20.

Despite being a smaller scale production, this does little to reduce the tribulations that trouble them and the bustling energy of the Protasov’s home.

David Fleischer’s rotating set displays a fractured home: many small corners in the cramped confines; all that supports the set with none of what supports the home. Its state mimics the occupants.

Julia Ohannessian’s Avdotya and Contessa Treffone’s Feema seem underused, meaning that much of the duty of representing the encroaching outside world destabilising the household is left to Yure Covich’s Yegor. Yegor is the only character seemingly capable of conceiving and completing anything amidst the chaos - he is at once assertive and disenfranchised.

With the roles of the serving class suppressed on stage, the drama feels at times a little selfish while the comedy rides high. Great performances from Toby Truslove as the soft and aloof scientist Protasov and Helen Thomson as the infatuated Melaniya, provide plenty of laughs. With the peasants voices muffled, the climax arrives almost unannounced amidst the chaos, it lacks the desperation such a seismic shift deserves.

Max Lyandvert’s compositions are beautiful and are brilliantly matched with the disturbing melancholia that plagues Jacqueline Mackenzie’s Liza.