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You Know We Belong Together

Edinburgh International Festival

The Lyceum

Four stars


Life is one big soap opera for Julia Hales in her autobiographical show-and-tell, which finally arrives in Edinburgh after the COVID pandemic prevented it from visiting, not once, but twice. Even now it has arrived, the drama keeps on coming, as Clare Watson’s production for Australia’s Black Swan State Theatre Company had to be rejigged due to five of the seven-strong cast being struck down by the virus, necessitating their appearance on film rather than in person.

 

This doesn’t stop the irrepressible Hales, who weaves her personal story of life with Down syndrome alongside her life long obsession with Home and Away, the sunkissed Australian soap still going strong after thirty-four years. Hales does this with considerable charm, as she invites us all to share in her story in designer Tyler Hill’s mock-up of the diner in Summer Bay, Home and Away’s fictional town where anything can and usually does happen. She even creates her own character for the show along with a set of self scripted dramatic plot twists.

 

Beyond TV drama, Hale and her cast tap into the collective experience of the Down syndrome community, and how it remains marginalised. In her quest for love, Hales is joined onstage by Joshua Bott, the only one of the cast lucky enough to have not gone down with COVID. Members of the audience are also co-opted to become part of her extended family, fictional or otherwise. On screen, Patrick Carter, Tina Fielding, Mark Junor, Melissa Junor and Lauren Marchbank join the fold with similar openness.

 

Co-written by Hales with Watson and Finn O’Branagain, there is a refreshing honesty to Hales’ story, which is driven with wit and occasional dance routines rather than polemic to become a call to arms emboldened by the power of love rather than conflict. With Michael Carmody’s video design utilised to the max, it also unintentionally shows off how screen-based work can become a vital part of the theatrical experience in a post lockdown world. Even better,Hales gives herself a happy ending. A life in Summer Bay surely awaits.


The Herald, August 28th 2022

 

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