A Conversation - Royal Exchange - 19/11/07 by Jo Beggs

Australia 2006: A girl is brutally raped and murdered. Her killer is jailed for life.

But what happens after the media circus moves out and their families are left to pick up the pieces?

In a faceless hotel conference room a group of damaged individuals come together to talk about the how the crime has affected their lives. A Conversation centres around Transformative Justice. A process used fairly widely in the Australian juvenile and criminal justice systems. Parties affected by a crime are brought together for a structured conversation with a facilitator. Every participant has their moment to speak, to vent their anger, voice their concerns, to blame and take the blame.

‘This is emotion in the raw because it is life in the raw’ writes David Moore, an Australian Transformative Justice facilitator whose work provided inspiration for Williamson when writing A Conversation and two other related plays. Indeed it is. This hour and a half in the theatre is less like drama and more like being in a therapy session, and the staging in the round means that the characters and the audience are part of the same circle. Once the family members have spoken, there’s an uncomfortable point where you feel as though the facilitator will tell you it’s your turn to speak.

And if it was, what would you say? The play raises more questions than it answers and what you leave with will depend on how you feel about human nature. What circumstances lead people to commit terrible atrocities against others? Is it the result of upbringing? Are they ‘born bad’?

As the conversation moves on we learn details of people’s lives, a picture emerges of secrets, fears, doubts, Endless lonely days, moments of joy. One day things are going just fine, the next everything falls apart. “Life is a lottery”, says the murderer’s mother “and kids are the scariest lottery of all”

What makes the play so successful is the intimacy, helped enormously by the simplicity of the set and the circular staging and Williamson’s detailed and believable character drawing. But performances here are crucial – and the cast are, without exception, totally convincing. In particular Margot Leicester and Susan Twist who play the two mothers in the drama offer truly harrowing performances which make this a gripping piece of theatre

In the end you can’t avoid the parallels drawn here between theatre and therapy - listening, learning, action and reaction, the unfolding of stories, and the search for resolution.