Just yesterday, reporting on a Dunedin-based Next Generation Study, the Dominion Post revealed: “The nuclear family is a thing of the past, according to new research that found only a quarter of 15 year-olds live with both their biological parents. Only 6 percent of those surveyed had spent their whole lives in households made up of their mum, dad and siblings.”

Lyle Kessler’s Orphans considers how three very different males might cope with having no parents at all. Set in Philadelphia at the time it premiered (1983), the play is predicated on the idea that growing up in a family is natural for the human species, in the same way that Lord of the Flies presupposes that adult guidance is a prerequisite for learning how to live well in the world. It is the absence of the crucial component that heightens and proves its value.

Kessler has placed two adult orphans – Treat, the provider, and his dependant younger brother, Phillip – in the run-down mess of a ‘home’ they’ve been surviving in from a very young age, since their father abandoned them and their mother died. Their co-dependent equilibrium is thrown off balance when Treat brings home a drunken man, Harry, believing him to be a filthy rich industrialist.  

Initially the character mix is redolent of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, in that we have a relatively streetwise petty criminal (Treat) looking out for his apparently intellectually handicapped younger brother (Phillip). In this case, though, it is the streetwise brother who brings the older man home in a misguided attempt at kidnapping for ransom, and Harry is not a tramp but a Chicago gangster on the run. There are shades of Dog Day Afternoon in the botched crime scenario too, and a touch of Fagin from Oliver Twist in Harry … But soon Orphans claims the right to its own distinct identity. 

Phillip watches TV and videotapes, nestles in a wardrobe, is always listening … What ‘meets the eye’ is a young man with a developmental age of about six but it turns out there’s more to him than that. Only his opportunities are limited, although these days he may also be diagnosed as somewhere on the autism spectrum. Jimmy O’Donovan is riveting in this role.

Treat’s first entrance, adorned in bling and a fascinator, raises gender spectrum and sexual preference questions but these become buried beneath the bursts of aggressive masculinity and the controlling behaviours he juxtaposes with boyish game-playing and a childish vulnerability overlaid with self-pitying bleats. It’s a complex role and Andrew Paterson nails every dimension in a fully committed performance.  

Given Harry is the most enigmatic character, I don’t want to give too much away. K C Kelly’s embodiment is delicate and finely nuanced as he moves from drunkard crime victim to compassionate father figure – or does he have ulterior motives? – while obliquely revealing his past and dealing with his own unfulfilled needs.

As the director Stella Reid has skilfully aligned her ideal cast to the text and each other, and kept a steady hand on the often volatile rhythm and pacing as it builds, in the second half, to a conclusion that demands we confront the bigger picture.

Victoria Gidley has assembled an eloquent range of costumes and Olivia Clarke-Edwards’ set design is suitably grotty. A bit of Googling reveals the wardrobe Phillip nestles in is supposed to contain his mother’s clothes. This could be made clearer and more could be made of his relationship with them. Also attention could be paid to creating the illusion that the ground outside the window is somewhat lower than the floor inside.

It’s clear the choices for the design and operation of lighting (Rory Hammond) and sound (Ryan Mead) are consciously non-naturalistic. A bright light emanates from the wardrobe, what I assume is daylight shines bright beyond the window when the text makes it clear it’s night time, and there are sudden changes in the lighting states that are not always linked to transitions in time. A sudden intrusion of outside sound late in the piece suggests we may have been perceiving this world through Phillip’s eyes and ears but I can’t quite reconcile the logic of that.

According to Reid’s programme note, “The play works only in an altered state, a place halfway between magical realism and statement, as it addresses the issue of parents without any characters onstage actually having them.” This presumably is why the lighting and sound are so odd but as the action plays out I find them distracting, as I empathise more and more with the characters.

That said, this production of Orphans delivers a powerful and deep-felt experience as it takes us from somewhat alienated arms-length observation, through a more subjective empathy and compassion, to an opportunity to consider its relevance to our own social changes. That’s good theatre in anybody’s book.  

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