Pentimento Productions and La Boite Indie present
The Bitterling
A new play by Sven Swenson
Writer and Director | Sven Swenson
Designer | Tim Wallace
Lighting Design | David Walters
Composition/Sound Design | Phil Slade
With | Louise Brehmer, Dash Kruck and Kaye Stevenson
Sometimes going back is the only way forward…
Following hard on the heels of his controversial runaway hit The Truth about Kookaburras (Metro Arts Independents, 2009) Sven Swenson’s new play The Bitterling premieres in March as the inaugural production of La Boite’s Indie Season.
The latest in Swenson’s series of Sundial Plays, The Bitterling is a tale about an extraordinary family reunion at the height of Brisbane’s disastrous 1974 floods. Rose Cutler went missing 15 years earlier, leaving her infant son to be raised by her mother, Ruby. On Australia Day 1974, Rose unexpectedly surfaces from the violent waters that threaten the home of her mother and son. For Ruby, who had already lived the agony of wondering if her prisoner-of-war husband was alive or dead, Rose’s disappearance carried a cruel sense of déjà vu and for the second time in her life, Ruby had to raise a child alone. Rose’s return is as astonishing as it is unforgivable. To studious, apocalyptic teenager Kevin, his mother’s emergence with the flood means a longed-for key to his identity, and quite probably a further sign that the world is about to end. For Rose, going back may be the only way of moving forward.
Dubbed “The Bard of Brisbane” by Queensland Theatre Company Artistic Director and fellow playwright Michael Gow, Swenson is well known for works within his acclaimed interconnected series, The Sundial Plays, including Vertigo & the Virginia (Queensland Theatre Company, 1999) and his epic work Road to the She-Devil’s Salon, the inaugural winner of the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award (Queensland Theatre Company, 2003).
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