Red Sky Morning is not a play about people who talk to each other. It’s a play about people who don’t. And after seeing it you’ll never look at a ‘silent moment’ in the same way again.

It’s a window into the life of a family living in rural Australia, but it could just as easily be a family anywhere. A father, mother and daughter go about their daily lives, and often when they are all in the same room together, they don’t say much to each other.

Not surprisingly then, what is presented to us isn’t the characters’ dialogue with each other, but instead their own inner monologue, completely raw and totally uncensored. You are taken directly inside their heads, to thoughts that would never be revealed in the real world. Their inner thoughts come at you seemingly straight off the top of their heads, sometimes all at once, and at other times one by one. They are all precisely timed like the arrangement of voices in a choir, so that you always hear what needs to be said, even when there are three voices sounding off at once.

At first their collective monologues suggest an ordinary blissful family life, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that there was going to be a happy ending here. The characters talk about their favourite TV shows, squeezing a pimple, farting in bed and sexual fantasies. Their honesty is initially quite hilarious and disarming, instantly endearing the characters to us. But soon the suggested sweetness of domestic bliss starts to degrade, revealing the turmoil and anguish seething under the surface. Human truth has a brutal side too.

All the while, a mysterious dog lingers outside, seemingly following the characters like a foreboding omen; A silent devil feeding on the emotion. Each character is distracted by it at points through out the play. What does it want? Why is it just hanging around?

The cast inhabits a very clever set; A small room created by Venetian blinds that perfectly doubles for psychological space. The blinds open, close, rise and fall, to create the impression of other rooms, and to expose the characters or shut them out.

The performances in Red Sky Morning are extraordinary. Sarah Sutherland (the mother), Erin Dwar (the daughter) and David Whitley (the father) are incredible, captivating and totally believable in their portrayal of real human emotion. The script of Red Sky Morning demands total commitment and honesty in performance, and they delivered perfectly.

Red Sky Morning is a tight, expertly crafted work. Tom Holloway offers more honesty than I’ve ever experienced in scripted theatre. Raw human emotion is revealed, naked and exposed but still full of humanity. And it’s done without resorting to pointing the finger of blame at anything obvious. Its plot is not hung on a specific issue like adultery, abortion or euthanasia. Even the mother’s alcoholism is merely a symptom of something greater.

That ‘something’ is never defined for us. Instead we fill in that blank with our own subjective sense of expectation and our deepest darkest fears. And before you’re even conscious of it, you’re no longer passively watching a play, but you’re willing accomplice in the lives of three people. You’re trapped in their life with them as they crash day after day, and there’s nothing that you can do about it.

The sense of ‘helplessness and inability to connect’ that the characters struggle with is translated so well, because as an audience member in this play, it is what you experience; An inability to directly confront the characters, to yell out, to change things.

I didn’t think it was possible for Red Stitch Theatre to move the bar up any higher, but they have. Blessed with Holloway’s outstanding writing, exceptional cast performances and clever production, Red Sky Morning is an extraordinary work that needs to be seen. My advice is to get a seat near the front where you’ll really be in the heart of all the action.

Red Sky Morning plays at Red Stitch Theatre till 27th September.

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