Sydney Reviews

A report on parenthood, Olivia Clement’s play, The Arrogance, appears to back up Philip Larkin’s view of mums and dads.

The arrogance is that the victims of these mums and dads, knowing full well the grief and trauma they leave, propagate parenthood by breeding themselves.

The play opens in a twilight darkness where heavily-pregnant Aussie expat poet Amber is spooked by nocturnal noise. She’s just moved to a small town in Iowa, where she is to take up a teaching gig at the local college, and she’s a little edgy.

Is it an intruder? Is it a ghost? The noise turns out to be the entrance of next door neighbour, Erin, delivering an impromptu welcome.

Later, she is visited by a ghost, her past emerging unexpectedly in her backyard in the form of her father. He seems jovial enough, a big, bluff bloke who relocated to Thailand, a paradise for the arrogance of the white male.

This posthumous visit brings past grievances to the surface, half in turns of soppy-stern and half at each other’s throats, accusations of abuse, abandonment and admonishment of guilt and forgiveness.

The argument seems to be, is it an arrogance to coerce a confession and force forgiveness?

Meanwhile, Amber finds the comfort in a friendship with her neighbour eroding as Erin’s history of parenting comes to light.

Directed with an unadorned spareness by Lucinda Gleeson, The Arrogance also sports a simple set of a backyard garden of high stemmed black bloomed plants, courtesy of set and costume designer, Soham Apte.

Whitney Richards as Amber and Alan Glover as her father are fine but the characterisation of Erin by Linden Wilkinson elevates this production considerably. The lived experience world weary performance of a woman conscious of the consequences of her choices is palpable.

It is through her that the pride and prejudice that creates the arrogance coalesces and casts coruscating lucency.