Glenbrook Players - Cloudstreet

LIVE PLAY ON STAGE.

Cloudstreet tells an epic story about the lives of two Australian families over two decades from 1943 to 1964. They come together in “Cloudstreet”, the rambling, decaying old house in Perth, after each family’s circumstances suffer a body blow that forces them to change course. These two families are an unlikely match as housemates, polar opposite in their attitude towards life and responsibility. The Lamb family is headed by the hard-working, religious, salt-of-the-earth, parents Lester and Oriel, who have found strength in their faith and in their responsibility to family above all else; while the Pickle family’s cohesion is a loose alliance, compromised by hard-drinking and smoking, the sexual exploits of Dolly Pickle, and husband Sam’s gambling and unquenchable belief in the Shifty Shadow of fate.

The struggle of both families to come to terms with personal losses, past and present, and the character flaws that have shaped their worlds, is a dominant theme in the play, as is the deeply significant and tender relationship between Quick Lamb and his damaged brother Fish. A second, often powerfully emotional strand in the narrative, concerns the developing relationships and coming of age stories of the Lamb and Pickle children.

Cloudstreet is fundamentally about belonging– relationship to land and family, and the places deeply engrained in the psyche of all peoples. These concepts are made accessible through The Old Uncle and the spirits of the young indigenous girls who inhabit the piano room. The house itself becomes a character that surrounds its people, past and present– as does the theme of water and the rivers that run through the lives of these complex characters.