(Chris Jones’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 5/22.)
At one point in "When the Rain Stops Falling," the deeply moving Australian play by Andrew Bovell now in a richly textured and searingly honest production from director John Gawlik at the Circle Theatre in Oak Park, a battered and melancholy young woman remarks on the cruelty of parents. At another juncture in this oft-devastating play, a pained older woman is moved to observe that there's nothing crueler than a child.
Both, I suppose, can be true. Both comments, in this play, are made by the same character at different points in her life. But every parent is a child first. One kind of cruelty invariably begets the other.