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Dalara Williams also pens and stars in Big Girls Don’t Cry, a new work set amid preparations for a deb ball in Redfern in 1966. Another season centrepiece will be a new play, The Wrong Gods, from S. Shakthidharan – co-creator with Flack of Counting and Cracking, coincidentally making its New York debut this week. This work shifts from Sri Lanka to India to tell the story of a mother-and-daughter struggle.
In The Spare Room, Garner explores the complex friendship between two women — one dying, the other who opens her home to care for her while her friend undergoes alternative cancer therapy. The story draws heavily on Garner’s own experience nursing a friend dying from cancer. It’s also separately being made into an opera.
From the writer of Counting and Cracking, The Wrong Gods tells the story of a mother-and-daughter struggle. Credit: Belvoir Street Theatre
Davis plays the carer, Helen, alongside Liz Alexander in the tragi-comedy directed by Flack. “It’s a book about honesty and rage, and women are taught to [express] neither of those things,” Flack said.
Flack and Davis are friends. He has leant on the actor for support during his nine years as artistic director “because of her understanding of what acting is, inspiring and unsurpassed in some way”.
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“So when I asked her to do this, and she said ‘yes’, I felt really gratified,” he said. “She’s like a dream to work with ... she’s so good.”
Flack has also cast Friels as the titular character in The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters for his emotional commitment and raw power: “He is an actor with a thumping heart. He has an unsurpassed ability with heightened text and raw power. He is the perfect King Lear. ”
Lear was a play for modern ages, Flack said: “It’s about how we pass on our kingdoms, it’s about the natural world revenging itself on our hubris. It’s about what happens when an old regime holds on for too long. It’s about what happens when a new regime isn’t ready or begins to tear itself apart. The extremity of beauty, of love and total uncertainty that the play cuts itself from is miraculous. I feel ready as a director.”
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