Sydney Reviews

Left – The cast. Cover – Yalin Ozucelik, Paul Blackwell and Geoff Morrell. Photos – Matt Nettheim

Vere (Faith) is an absolute tour de force. Sarah Goodes has directed a stunning production of John Doyle’s play, and it is beautifully performed by a stellar ensemble cast. This is one of the best shows I have seen this year.

Vere is an academic – a physicist. He has been working on research related to the Higgs-Boson particle (the so-called god particle) and has been invited to Switzerland to join the research team. One month before he is due to leave, however, he discovers that he has dementia, and that his faculties will swiftly and dramatically decline. In the first act, we see him at an impromptu staff party for the end of semester just after he has been diagnosed, terribly, horribly conscious of the fate that is about to befall him. In the second act, we see him with his family after his condition has considerably worsened. He drifts in and out of lucidity, clinging to the notion that he must get to Switzerland, but unable to remember the names of the people around him.

Paul Blackwell is utterly believable in the title role of Vere, capturing both Vere’s towering intellect, his decline, and the horror he feels at his own mental disintegration. He is ably supported by a wonderful ensemble. The actors that play his colleagues in the first act play the role of his family and their guests in the second, a potent reminder of how blurry reality is becoming for Vere. Rebecca Massey is particularly excellent as Vere’s fellow physicist Kate in the first act and as devoutly Christian and close-minded Kathy in the second. Similarly, Geoff Morrell portrays the lecherous Vice-Chancellor Ralph and Kathy’s minister husband Roger with aplomb. Despite the fact that Vere’s decline is horrible and tragic, this is also an extremely funny play, and Massey and Morrell in particular find the beats of Doyle’s comedy perfectly.

This play resonated particularly deeply for me. As an academic, the idea of losing one’s mind, one’s intellect, one’s learning, is viscerally terrifying, almost unspeakably horrifying. If you lose your mind, what is left of you? Are you anything beyond your knowledge? Can you have faith in anything, when there is nothing left of you? Should you? This are questions that Vere (Faith) grapples with deftly and intelligently. It is never preachy – even when Vere is actually lecturing, you never feel like you are being lectured at. Vere (Faith) is an exploration of mental evaporation, beautiful, meaningful, and very, very clever.

And John Doyle certainly knows how to write academics! I found it a bit hard to believe that Kate didn’t know who Taylor Swift was (and that Simon did know who Taylor Dent was), but then I remembered some of the people I know outside the field of cultural studies, and… yeah. The constant slipping into teacher-mode and sharing of knowledge was so recognisable to me. And the scene where Vere plans an interdisciplinary course about the relationship between male preference for beetroot and fire was just perfect. I know the level of seriousness with which Vere took this was meant to be symptomatic of his declining faculties, but I have totally had conversations like that one.

Do whatever you can to see this show. Vere (Faith) is definitely one of my favourite shows of 2013. It is funny and tragic and clever and has a scope as broad and deep as the universe. Brilliantly written, wonderfully directed and performed, this is an absolute must-see.


Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia present
Vere (Faith)
by John Doyle

Director Sarah Goodes

Venue: Sydney Opera House
Dates: 6 Nov – 7 Dec, 2013
Tickets: $95 – $55
Bookings: www.sydneytheatre.com.au