Review: YOU KNOW WE BELONG TOGETHER, Southbank Centre

After sold-out seasons in the 2018 Perth Festival and BLACK SWAN's 2019 season, this three-day run at the Southbank Centre's Purcell Room marks a UK debut for You Know We Belong Together', Julia Hales' unsparing and uplifting celebration of living with Down Syndrome.

The 'live documentary'-style show, lasting a jaunty 1 hour 10 minutes, sees Hales lead a six-strong cast of Western Australian actors in a story that combines lived experience, recorded testimony, audience participation and a proposed fictional storyline for Hales' beloved soap Home and Away.

The set is initially a simple affair, the stage bedecked in a classic 1990s linoleum pattern before gradually filling with cast and audience alike as Hales aims to reflect the soap's iconic cafe setting.

Lighting too errs on the minimalist side, a soft blue hue accentuating and empowering Hales' words as the show progresses.

The production is written by Hales alongside Finn O'Branagáin and director Clare Watson, who oversees proceedings with a clear vision and firm touch and helps bring this light-hearted, gentle and uplifting work to life.

The obsession with Home and Away brings a novel touch to proceedings, with Hales playing video recordings of meetings with the cast while pitching to have herself cast in the show as a character called Claire who has a suitably dramatic storyline.

Hales is without doubt a gifted storyteller, weaving her real-life story with a fictitious narrative based around her proposed Home and Away alter-ego. She finds a way to bring her audience with her, inviting three apparently unsuspecting members up to the stage to read scenes with her, too much intentional and unintentional hilarity.

Hales also masterfully introduces a variety of other cast members, drawing out their own frustrations and aspirations and hopes and dreams in a way that avoids sanctimony; never hyperbolising, never infantilising, at the heart of this story are real people with real lives, real dreams.

The mixture of forms helps keep the production fresh and always finds a new perspective for the audience to engage with.

After completing this set of shows, the production moves onto the Royal Lyceum Theatre at the Edinburgh International Festival between August 24-27, then returns to Australia for a four-day stretch at the Sydney Opera House.

At one point, as Hales and co discuss life with Down Syndrome, she admits that at times "it feels like everybody is watching me". Tonight, they had very good reason to. And I urge everyone else watch this too.

You Know We Belong Together will run at the Royal Lyceum Theatre at the Edinburgh International Festival between August 24-27.

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