Gwen in Purgatory

23 September - 25 September

View Original Production

A Co-production with La Boite Theatre Company

Tommy Murphy

Neil Armfield

With
Nathaniel Dean, Grant Dodwell, Sue Ingleton, Melissa Jaffer and Pacharo Mzembe

Gwen is 90. She woke up this morning to discover that purgatory is sitting alone in a new house in a new subdivision on the edge of town, trying to work out if the remote in her hand operates the TV, the air-con or the fan-forced oven. But the kids are coming round and Father Ezekiel is on his way to bless the house, so the beginning of the end is looking up …

Written specially for Company B, Gwen in Purgatory is Tommy Murphy’s brilliant existential comedy about an African missionary in the wilderness of Australian suburbia. Gwen’s brood of ordinary souls is battling along in a changing world and wringing out the last drops of their matriarch’s faith. Between them they may just find their way to some sort of forgiveness.

Tommy Murphy’s Holding the Man was seen at Belvoir St in 2007, and we’ve been hanging out for him to return. He’s one of the country’s most formidable playwrights: canny, dangerous and very funny. Gwen in Purgatory is his illumination of the fear and humour at the heart of Australia’s Irish-Catholic inheritance.

Neil Armfield directs this portrait of an old life in search of a graceful ending.