Meet the family. Edith is a highly-strung matriarch who prepares for lunch like it’s a military offensive. Youngest son Matthew, a frustrated actor and reluctant lawyer, longs for a different career … and for his brother’s wife. But Sheena, peeved and prickling for an argument, longs only for a drink. It’s Christmas – what could possibly go wrong?
Sam Holcroft’s audacious script cranks the familial tension up to 11 using narrative tricks that clue the audience into a joke of which the hapless characters are unaware. Frenetically funny, Rules for Living is about all those expectations and roles that life sets upon us – and the tics and twitches that betray us when we struggle to shake them off.
Susanna Dowling makes her STC directorial debut with a brilliant ensemble cast including Heather Mitchell (The Harp in the South), Michelle Lim Davidson (Banging Denmark) and Logie Award-winner Hazem Shammas.
Timed for the silly season, Rules For Living is the most deliciously dysfunctional Christmas lunch you’ll ever attend.
“An intelligent comedy that leaves us questioning at what point the rules for living we all adopt become a form of entrapment." The Guardian UK