he Book of Everything works because it somehow manages to hold two completely different worlds in the same pair of hands.
There is storybook fantasy, whimsy and genuine joy, but underneath it sits a painfully recognisable family drama shaped by fear, control and violence. Neil Armfield’s direction never lets one diminish the other. The darkness makes the joy more precious; the joy stops the darkness from consuming the production entirely.
Matthew Whittet is astonishing as nine-going-on-ten-year-old Thomas Klopper. There is none of the usual sense of an adult “playing young” — his physicality, curiosity and absolute belief in Thomas’ strange little universe make the performance completely convincing. Pamela Rabe is, unsurprisingly, magnetic, but this is ultimately an exceptional ensemble production, with Julie Forsyth, John Gaden, Claire Jones, John Leary, Rebecca Massey, Bridie McKim and Jack Ward all contributing to the strange, funny and sometimes frightening world Thomas inhabits. BoE-Digital-Program-5.pdf
Perhaps my favourite part, though, was the way the audience was invited directly into that world. Those moments do more than create interaction: they briefly return us to the ridiculous certainty of childhood imagination, when impossible things could be completely real and adulthood had not yet taught us quite so many reasons they couldn’t be.
It is funny, confronting, painful, inventive and extraordinarily beautiful theatre — a production that understands that childhood can contain terror and wonder at exactly the same time.