Packed houses composed largely of young people - Frantic Assembly goes big on education – are being held spellbound this week by Andrew Bovell’s taut family drama Things I Know to Be True at Oxford Playhouse.

What must these apprentice theatregoers be thinking of this emotionally overwrought, absurdly unlikely, but unarguably very well-written play?

Possibly that theatrical art will ever imitate life as it is led in television soaps – and particularly as depicted in incident-packed Australian ones, away from which our attention would appear to have been diverted.

A co-production with State Theatre Company of South Australia, the play is actually set Down Under – in a suburban home in Adelaide – though the accents of all players remain oddly British.

One thing I certainly know to be true is that sensational hokum will always be recognised for what it is by a practised eye, for all the fancy trappings attached in the way of music, lighting and (a Frantic Assembly trademark) balletic movement.

This new play, as I indicated, is a polished affair, with much to say about the realities of family life. The acting by the six-strong cast is always of a high standard, too, under co-directors Geordie Brookman and Scott Graham. My problem was an ongoing inability to suspend disbelief.

The focus is on night nurse materfamilias Fran (Imogen Stubbs), her retired – and as a consequence rather bored – car worker husband Bob (Ewan Stewart), and their four grown-up children.

The youngest, Rosie (Kirsty Oswald) sets the ball rolling in narrative terms with an unfortunate romantic experience during gap year travels (from which she returns distraught) in Berlin.

There follow episodes featuring the other siblings in turn: first education bureaucrat Pip (Natalie Casey), next nerdy IT specialist Mark (Matthew Barker) and finally flashy, Jack-the-lad financial services worker Ben (Richard Mylan).

With each development, punctuated by much rowing and ructions in dad’s beloved garden, credibility is strained a little further. Could all these dreadful events - and there’s the biggie to come – be happening in the one family?

Despite a few jokes early on, the tone is relentlessly gloomy and it is no surprise when a sombre song by Leonard Cohen – a favourite of mum’s – is subjected to rigorous analysis.

The plangent tone is partly borrowed from Chekhov. Rosie’s closing speech concerning autumn advancing into winter is pretty much a lift of the end of Three Sisters, the play in which I first saw the talents of the student Ms Stubbs at this very venue.

  • The play continues until Saturday. Box office: 01865 305305, oxfordplayhouse.com
  • 3/5