Giving Up The Ghosts

Escaping the allure of Hollywood isn't easy, even at The Blue Room – Perth's home of independent theatre – so when audiences are presented with a suicide pact, it's hard to shake that conditioned yearning for a family-friendly ending. But Giving Up The Ghosts isn't designed for light-hearted, fluffy escapism. It is an unnerving yet honest depiction of how two people might reach the point of wanting to die, presented with complexity, portrayed with sincerity.

While it might ease the anxious audience if Ruth (a lost woman completely defined by the decisions others make for her) and Steve (a man unhappily defined by the decisions he's made for himself) were to come to their senses, fall in love and skip off into the sunset, it would gloss over the unsettling fact that in real life, for every happy ending there's a tragic tale. Giving Up The Ghosts isn't so concerned with the outcome of Ruth and Steve but more so the larger concept that these characters represent. The contrast between Ruth and Steve demonstrate how two people so vastly different can be tormented by the same, unseen demons simmering beneath the surface and how the extremities of these two characters encapsulate a wide range of equally vulnerable people in between. Sure, suicide isn't exactly groundbreaking material but rarely is it presented in a way that is so eloquent, unbiased and multi-dimensional.