The Faithful Servant: Preview

It’s not easy being good.

Canberra-based writer Tom Davis has followed up the critically acclaimed premiere season of The Chain Bridge (The Street Theatre, 2015) with a play about foreign aid, former colonies and the conflicts between generations.

The Faithful Servant asks: What does it mean to be good? In revealing the multiple facets of that question, the play takes us from Australia to Mozambique, from the present to the 1960s, and into the world of aid NGOs and their relationships with ‘the poor’.

Ray has given his all to the medical NGO he founded to help poor communities in Africa. His adopted daughter from Mozambique, Caroline, refuses to follow him – her life is with her family in Australia and her GP practice. Pereira has been Ray’s right-hand man in Mozambique for decades, but now wants to transform the NGO into a faith-based organisation.

As the play winds its way back from Ray’s death in Australia to his first encounter with Africa, the conflict between the differing interpretations of goodness takes on a visceral intensity. Being good, it becomes clear, is neither straightforward nor easy. And it poses moral dilemmas that strike at the core of our understandings of community and family.

Brought to the stage by The Street’s Artistic Director, Caroline Stacey, The Faithful Servant is a total theatre experience for audiences. Actors play multiple characters, traverse time and place and use all the elements that theatre brings to story-telling. It is a play of ideas, emotion and theatricality that will strike a chord with many Canberrans.

“Davis’ dialogue is natural yet refined, profound yet effortless… 4.5 stars” ArtsHub Australia

"Tom Davis’ compelling play of family excoriation  ... The Chain Bridge is a haunting play, brilliantly staged for this production with memorable performances by five outstanding actors." The Australian Arts Review

"The poetic script by Tom Davis is beautifully written ... this [is a] powerful and strangely uplifting production ..." The Barefoot Review

Street One - On Stage (Traverse) Unreserved | Duration - 90 minutes, no interval.