Red Sky Morning

RED SKY MORNING

By Red Stitch Actors Theatre. Rear 2 Chapel St, St Kilda. Until Saturday. $30/$20. Tel: 9533 8083.

I haven't seen every performance staged in 2008 but after racking up more than 100 I'm willing to nominate Red Stitch's latest as Play of the Year. There's no prize, but you should get along to see it. It's the first piece presented as part of the company's new writer's program and the collaborative development has resulted in a work that succeeds on every level. Tom Holloway's script is tight - hilarious and frequently heart-rending - and performances from David Whiteley, Sarah Sutherland and Erin Dewar are pitch-perfect. They play a couple and their teenage daughter during a long, isolated day, and while the piece begins with the tender comedy of simple misunderstandings, an arresting portrait of deep depression, denial and helpless complicity rapidly emerges. Through a slow unfolding, the audience is drawn into the despair of these utterly believable lives - unable to communicate with one another but drowning in their own thoughts. The recurring image of a black dog is the only aspect that yields to the obvious; in every other way this is a complex, urgent production that deserves to live on.