The patriarch dies and the son inherits the family farm out of tradition, pride, fear and resentment. The farm is failing and a developer wants to buy the land and turn it into a new housing estate. It’s a story that’s been told before, but what ‘Nightfall’ the latest production at ‘The Bridge Theatre’ so beautifully encapsulates; is the lengths we go to to please others at the cost of our own happiness.
Siblings Lou and Ryan live on the family farm with their widowed mother Jenny. When Ryan’s best friend and Lou’s ex-lover Pete gets out of prison, he and Ryan come up with an idea to skim oil off the pipe that runs through their farm to sell on and save the foundering family business. However, when Jenny finds out about this plan she’s less than happy that the life she helped build with her husband is being forced in a new illegal direction away from their traditional roots.
What ‘Nightfall’ does so effortlessly is it dances around its own subject matter, almost trying to escape it as much as the characters are; but it’s as harsh and as unavoidable as that pipe running through the centre of their garden. At it’s core it is a piece about loss and how we as humans deal with grief on any level, be it death, livelihood, friendship or love. It forces us to confront the innate ownership we have over our own pain, and the way we inadvertently manipulate others to heal our wounds whilst selfishly hindering them from curing their own.
