Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children has made its Queensland premiere at PIP Theatre, a powerfully provocative play that sinks its teeth into aging, dying, and social conscience in the age of escalating environmental disasters.
Co-produced by PIP Theatre, A Moveable Theatre, and Amanda McErlean, The Children is a darkly funny drama about what we owe to the future that extends past our own lifetimes. Directed by Heidi Gledhill, with dramaturgy by Desley Martin, the rich themes and dramatic imagery of The Children are drawn out by the conversations and shifting relationships between three characters over a single evening.
Hazel and Rob are retired nuclear physicists living in an isolated coastal cottage. They were living on an organic farm, but this new home is further away from the exclusion zone of a recent nuclear accident, a meltdown at their former workplace. Hazel is a driven and determinedly cheerful woman who practices yoga religiously and resists the decline of aging, contrasted against the cheeky humour and she’ll-be-right attitude of her husband.
One afternoon an old colleague, Rose, drops in unannounced after more than 30 years. In that time, Hazel and Rob have raised a family and settled into retired life as a couple; Rose, on the other hand, is unmarried, has no children, and has lived a seemingly exciting life in America for decades. As small talk about families and old friends wanes, it becomes apparent that Rose has arrived for more than a social visit. Old secrets and rivalries resurface, and the drama unfolds in real time over 90 minutes as the three scientists drink homemade wine and talk about the past, the future, and their own aging in the present.
The Children premiered in London in 2016 and was inspired by the events and aftermath of the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima, Japan. Kirkwood’s play was originally set on the east coast of England, but this production was granted permission to shift the setting to an Australian context.
Kirkwood’s sharp writing was brought vividly to life by Gledhill’s vision and the emotional range of the cast. There was plenty of polite small talk and reminiscence but then a sudden pointed remark, an unshielded and unfiltered truth, would shift the energy and suck the air from the room.
Hazel and Rob have four children and three grandchildren. Rose has lived a footloose life in America and returns to Australia as she left, single and childless. These characters also present a contrast, considering whether parenthood changes their perspective on the future and the responsibility they feel for the world they will leave behind.
At its heart, The Children is a play about desire and wanting – and the price that must be paid for unchecked desire in resentment, guilt, and grief. It tackles personal and generational accountability, human selfishness, and modern comforts that have become so expected as to feel like entitlements, like safe drinking water and reliable electricity. The Children posits that making amends can mean learning how to accept less than we want, in the best interests of others.
Set and costume design by Helena Trupp added to the claustrophobic atmosphere of the cottage kitchen with a pointed stage that jutted into the audience. A cool colour palette within the cottage drew lines between the characters and gave an eerie sense of calm. The cloying domesticity and emotional impact of the play can really be felt in PIP’s 100-person theatre, with seats fanning out from the thrust stage and the audience sitting almost around the kitchen table with the actors.
Sound design by Tommi Civili held an ominous, unsettling hum under the play’s action, rising in moments of tension and discomfort, and the crackling clicks of a Geiger counter. Lighting design by Noah Milne complemented and enhanced the shifting video design of the backdrop as it showed the passing of the afternoon and evening in real time, as well as suggesting the horror of the nuclear disaster in lurid greens and yellows.
Co-producers Terry Hansen, Julia Johnson, and Amanda McErlean played the roles of Rob, Hazel, and Rose, respectively. All three actors delivered excellent performances, individually and as a highly attuned trio, from the play’s dark humour to the quieter moments of vulnerability.
The Children is a play of breathlessly high tension and emotion – raucous laughter, biting derision, intense fear and despair. The actors navigated all of this, and more, with impressive skill and subtlety. Kirkwood’s script uses fragmented speech, bits of sentences overlapping one another, but this was delivered with clarity and cohesiveness by the actors.
Nuclear accidents are not the only environmental disaster that threaten our collective future. As funny and moving as it is bleak, The Children provokes audiences to consider what we owe to those who will inherit the world we have shaped, and what we are willing to do when that debt comes due. In the meantime, there will be blood, tears, laughter, and dancing.
The Children will be performed at PIP Theatre, Milton, from 4-21 June 2025
For ticketing and further information, visit the PIP Theatre website
Read my interview with the cast and creatives of The Children here for behind-the-scenes insight
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