The Lewis Trilogy (Griffin) ★★★★1/2

Summer of the Aliens / Cosi / This Much Is True. Written by Louis Nowra. Griffin Theatre Company. 9 Feb – 21 Apr, 2024.

This is glorious, miss it at your own peril! By staging all three parts of Louis Nowra’s The Lewis Trilogy together, Griffin Theatre Company not only gives you the complete character arc of an Australian man spanning his youth in the 60s, his formative years in the 70s and his latter years in the 00s, they also give us a snapshot of the darker side of Australian lives lurking just under the laughs. Something about that feels quintessentially Griffin!

The revelation here is seeing Lewis’ life played out in a single sitting (you can watch across three evenings if you prefer). Played by Philip Lynch and William Zappa, Lewis is constantly trying to find where he fits in. In Summer of the Aliens, a teenage Lewis begins to see through the lies and hypocrisy of adults. In Cosi, he gets a harsh lesson in the personal/political divide. Before settling into his place as one of the colourful locals in a Sydney pub in This Much is True. Always a bit of an outsider, over the course of the three plays he finds his niche among those mainstream Australia ignores.

Put together these aren’t stories of great triumphs or massive events, but of the small scale tragedies and turning points that add up to form a full life. As older Lewis looks back over his time (almost as if he’s in the Rising Sun Inn from This Much is True, telling the locals with his life story) he sees the building blocks of his adult self in the events of his youth. To Nowra’s credit, Lewis isn’t a good man, or a bad man, he is simply a flawed man with all the promise and disappointment of us all.

In telling this story together, it changes the way we the audience approach each tale. Having older Lewis (Zappa) as the narrator in Summer of the Aliens comes full circle when we hit This Much is True. The incidental connective tissue between the plays comes to the fore now. When Lewis gives Roy his Uncle Richard’s scarf in Cosi, it means more as we’ve just seen Uncle Richard give it to Lewis in Summer of the Aliens and there is something circular about the fact both Roy and Uncle Richard are played by the same actor (Paul Capsis) forming a never ending cycle of giving and receiving. After investing hours watching young Lewis grow, and understanding his life, the melancholy of This Much is True hits more deeply. 

The performances are all terrific with everyone getting to flex their acting muscles in multiple roles. It’s a blessing to have both Paul Capsis and Ursula Yovich on stage at the same time – comic geniuses who can nail an emotional beat like seasoned pros. Nikki Viveca oozes pathos, even in the most ridiculous of roles. Masego Pitso, Thomas Campbell and Darius Williams sit on a knife’s edge as their roles range from “relatively normal” to “deeply troubled”. The diversity of the cast isn’t a gimmick either, it gives each role a malleable quality that reminds us these characters could be any of us, regardless of race, gender or sexuality. 

Daniel Herten’s sound and music, combined with an adaptable and impactful set design by Jeremy Allen (one of the best in the biz right now) gives each part a sense of time and place without ever feeling static. Kelsey Lee’s lighting does a lot of heavy lifting (especially in Summer of the Aliens). At only 90 min a piece, each play flies by so if you’re worried about watching all three in a day you can relax. I arrived with only 4 hours sleep and was engaged the whole way through.

But The Lewis Trilogy is really Declan Greene’s victory lap. Apart from the excellent direction of each play, it is a mammoth undertaking for a small theatre to stage a work of this scope and a sign of his vision as Artistic Director. By refusing to quietly close the door on the current version of the SBW Stables Theatre before it gets knocked down, rebuilt and expanded, he has given us a theatrical event. Greene has reminded us of how much Griffin has done with so little.

Maybe that’s my lasting impression of The Lewis Trilogy, a melancholic warm hug. As you walk down the stairs after This Much is True, it’s hard not to feel a bit sad bidding farewell to the oddly shaped, scrappy, inventive, Australian space. Sure I won’t miss the seating, or the bottleneck between the front door, the bar and theatre doors, or how hot the foyer gets on a summer evening etc but I hope it doesn’t lose that magic that comes from forcing creatives into a (literal) corner and watching them work their way out.

So while it’s nice to know this Griffin will rise phoenix-like (weird mixed metaphor but I’m sticking with it) from the rubble in 2026 with a new, larger space, I will miss all the memories held in this ramshackle ex-stable.