Last few days to catch ‘Family Secrets’

Playwright Enrico Luttmann has become something of a star in his home country of Italy and South Africans have recently been finding out why. The first English adaptation of his work, “Family Secrets” has been attracting crowds for its nuanced story-telling and gripping narrative around a young man who moves home to spend time with his mother who is in the last few months of her life.

Director Alan Swerdlow explains that the word “comedy” on the poster may easily be misinterpreted by modern audiences, who see it and expect a laughter-riot.

“The word “comedy” in South Africa has lost its real meaning and is generally confused with farce and slapstick humour, or stand-up comedy routines. Initially, back to classical times, anything that wasn’t a tragedy was a comedy,” he says. “Jump forward many centuries, and a comedy was an amusing take on relationships or social issues, never a laughter riot. Enrico Luttman is an Italian playwright, and I believe he describes his play as a comedy in the Italian sense – “Commedia della vita” or the comedy of life.”

Swerdlow explains that Luttman is “deliberately transgressive in his approach, treating each moment in his narrative in an unexpected way instead of conventional responses”, but is quick to add that there are still “great laugh lines in very serious moments to make us recalibrate our responses, or just check our inherited reactions”.

“Family secrets is both funny and sad, silly and serious – just like life,” he says.

To Swerdlow the name of the play says a lot, marking quite clearly that every family has secrets, but also, he suggests, to the fact that the play is ultimately about what a true family is.

“Our notions of what constitutes a family has changed a great deal over the past fifty years.  Armistead Maupin coined the phrase ‘Logical Family’ as opposed to ‘Biological Family’ to describe the family we each create for ourselves, the people we are surrounded by and are meaningful to us who are not necessarily biological relatives.  I think Luttman is saying that we need to refocus our notions of what committed relationships between individuals means, he says.

In the cast of Dorothy-Ann Gould and Sven Ruygrok,  Swerdlow says he was looking for two people who would not only have chemistry but who were capable of matching the play’s switches between heart-breaking sadness and farcical silliness.

“As is always the case for me, casting comes about through intensive discussion with the presenting management, in this case, Pieter Toerien as producer. We spoke about the demands of the roles, appropriate age, experience and ability and sifted our way through a list of candidates until we were agreed,” says Swerdlow who adds that in other productions he might audition actors for skills and abilities he does not know about.

“Dorothy-Ann Gould is a veteran actor with huge, varied experience and ability, while Sven Ruygrok is a young actor with extraordinary ability and promise, and the two work together so well. Once we arrived at the two of them both Pieter and I were in instant agreement,” he says.

It’s a pairing that many would agree is formidable, in a play that sounds like a future crowd favourite, and it shouldn’t be missed as the run comes to an end this Sunday. Tickets can be found here.

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