The quietly devastating family drama Things I Know to be True leaves you with a heart overflowing

From left: Alanna Bale, Daniel Maslany, Christine Horne, Michael Derworiz, Seana McKenna and Tom McCamus star in Things I Know to be True.DAHLIA KATZ/Mirvish

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• Title: Things I know to be true
• Written by: Andrew Bovell
• Director: Philip Rico
• Actor: Tom McCamus, Seana McKenna, Alanna Bale, Michael Derworiz, Christine Horne, Daniel Maslany
• Companies: The Company Theater and Mirvish Productions
• Venue: CAA Theater
• City: Toronto
• Year: Until February 19, 2023

The Critic’s Choice

I’m writing this review with a lump in my throat.

Things I know to be true, Andrew Bovell’s quietly devastating family drama, has this effect on you. It steadily ramps up the emotional stakes over two hours and two acts, culminating in a harrowing climax. They leave the theater (in this case the CAA theatre) with an overflowing heart.

True, the Australian playwright sometimes seems to be running down a list of every issue that might plague a modern adult family, from one child’s broken marriage to another’s gender dysphoria. But it’s also true that he articulates these themes beautifully. And in this powerful Off-Mirvish production from the Toronto Company Theater they are brought to life with conviction by six amazing actors.

The first of these is Alanna Bale, who portrays the youngest member of the Price clan. In the play’s opening monologue, her fragile Rosie confides in us that she is cutting short a gap year trip to Europe after being robbed and abandoned by a fake lover. She flies back to Australia to join her family, whose love is one thing she knows to be true.

When she arrives unannounced in the kitchen of her home in suburban Adelaide, her parents and siblings quickly flock to her. Fran (Seana McKenna), her smart mom, guesses what happened, though Rosie denies it. Bob (Tom McCamus), her ever-helpful father, takes his daughter to the garden for a soothing chat.

But that family certainty that Rosie believes in is shattered by a series of shocks over the course of a year.

Alanna Bale plays Rosie, the youngest member of the Price Clan.DAHLIA KATZ/Mirvish

The first comes from Pip (Christine Horne), the eldest Price child, a government official who reveals she’s leaving her husband and two little girls for a new job – and a new man – in Vancouver. Later, her brothers drop more bombshells: Mark (Michael Derworiz), who previously mysteriously split from a longtime girlfriend, and Ben (Daniel Maslany), a finance worker whose spending-minded nature particularly worries his working-class dad.

The blows come while Bob and Fran deal with late-life issues of their own. Bob, a fired auto worker, retired too early and now, at 63, is trying to fill his days tending to his rose garden. Fran, a registered nurse, fears her husband is slipping into premature old age. She has also been hiding longtime secrets from him, which explains her outsized anger at Pip’s infidelity.

Stratford Festival stars McKenna and McCamus are great as Fran and Bob, a couple caught up in a tough parenting/soft parenting routine that’s increasingly tested with each new crisis. Fran, who helms the family ship, is hard on her children – all but Ben, her darling – but McKenna softens her steel with a spark of good humor. And she also gives us insights into the romantic-melancholic side of her character – after all, Fran is a fan of Leonard Cohen.

McCamus (who played a very different aging father in Soulpepper’s earlier this season Queen Goneril/King Lear) is a calm, soothing presence as Bob. But there is also melancholy in his performance. When we see him tinkering aimlessly in the garden, we feel the sadness of a man aged before his time.

Horne is just as wonderful as Pip, especially in her letter to Fran, which is presented as a monologue, skillfully capturing Pip’s aching self-realization that she’s making a decision with her heart, not her head. As the gentle Mark, Derworiz brings to life the agonies of one of the most difficult disclosures a child can make to their parents. Fran and Bob’s initial reaction to this is appalling, but Bovell also allows us to understand it from their perspective.

Stratford Festival stars Seana McKenna and Tom McCamus are great as Fran and Bob, a couple caught up in a tough parenting/soft parenting routine that’s increasingly tested with each new crisis. DAHLIA KATZ/Mirvish

Maslany infuses Ben with a frenetic youthful energy that contrasts with Bob’s bleak demeanor – something Ben emphasizes by cheerfully mocking his father. Just as Pip provokes Fran’s ire that the mother sees herself in the daughter, Bovell hints that there is a similar identification between Bob and Ben. Surely it’s Ben’s financial misdeeds that eventually cause his father to explode with an ugly macho demeanor that we never expected from him. But then this is a game of unexpected truths.

Local theater audiences know Bovell from his earlier dramas, When the rain stops falling – the 2011 Shaw Festival sleeper hit – and speak in tongueswhich the Company Theater also produced in 2012. Where these plays had puzzle plots, this one is linear and largely naturalistic, although its original Australian/British production (2016) contained elements of physical theatre.

For his Canadian debut, director Philip Riccio ditched these in favor of kitchen sink and backyard realism. Designer Shannon Lea Doyle fills the stage with an ornate indoor/outdoor set, complete with an overhanging eucalyptus tree, while lighting by Nick Blais subtly evokes the seasons and hours of the day. But while Riccio has retained the play’s South Australian setting, he lets his actors speak with their own Canadian accent.

That lack of authenticity didn’t bother me – not when it elicits such emotionally authentic performances from its cast. It’s that basic honesty Things I know to be true that depends on you It leaves you feeling like you’ve shared a family’s pain, but also the underlying love.

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