The impact of a relationship breakdown extends well beyond the individuals splitting up. When a couple have been together for a long time, their parting affects their children, their families and their friends. The impact on everyone in their orbit can be profound, especially those closest to them. If the split comes as a shock, it can be particularly confronting.
"You can't hear that news from people whose relationships you admired and thought were very solid without it being tricky," says playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. . "Somewhere inside you, no matter how happy you are with your partner ... you wonder, are they asking questions about life that I should be asking? Do they have higher standards? Are they more honest about what they want than we are? And also the thought, well I'm happy but how does my partner feel? Do I really know how they feel? Are they going to spring this on me?"
![Catherine McClements and Katherine Tonkin during rehearsals for Three Little Words.](/web/20170420222352im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/c/k/c/5/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gv8cqc.png/1491577355359.jpg)
Murray-Smith tackles these issues in Three Little Words, which has its world premiere at the Melbourne Theatre Company this month. With four main characters, the action resonates around Tess and Curtis, who are going their separate ways after two decades together. We first meet them at a dinner party, where they drop this bombshell on their best friends, lesbian couple Annie and Bonnie.
Tess, played by Catherine McClements, has instigated the move. Aged in her 40s, she has just lost her mother and her daughter is 17; she's no longer a daughter or a hands-on mother. She comes to the realisation that she's spent more of her life being Tess and Curtis than she has just being Tess. Those elements come together to prompt what Murray-Smith describes as "a massive existential adventure".
![Joanna Murray-Smith's Three Little Words raises existential questions about life and love.](/web/20170420222352im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/8/c/i/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gv8cqc.png/1491577355359.jpg)
"It's not quite a crisis; it's an adventure more than a crisis. Tess readily admits she doesn't know what's going to happen – she has lots of doubts."
Initially at least, the couple say the break-up is amicable. In fact they are far more conflicted about it than they reveal, even to their best mates. "It becomes nasty because of what's at stake," says Murray-Smith. "Everyone is undermined, people start getting scared, they start getting defensive, when they get defensive they start getting nasty. The civility of them having decided to split descends into complete hell but at the outset, you know, she's really on a spiritual quest. She's not looking for... another partner, it's not like she's angry or resentful towards him, she just wants to know if life can offer more – or if she can offer more."
Speaking during rehearsals at the MTC, Murray-Smith says the play prompts us to examine what we want from life and how we create it. "They're grappling with this complex question of whether, when you reach middle age, is it more beguiling to be alone than it is to be in a couple? Is that the time in your life when... you owe it to yourself to see who you are again after having been one of two? [To] find out who you are when you're one?"
While it doesn't provide too many clear resolutions, the play does suggest it is not easy to undo a long-term love affair. "We might articulate our own resolve – it's over, it's over, I'm moving on – but, particularly if you have children, you can never shut that door."
After many years in a relationship, the idea of going solo can seem seductive. The tricky bit is working out what that looks like and the reality can be quite different to the theory. "There are also those questions like being alone can seem incredibly attractive," says Murray-Smith. "But when you are alone, what Tess comes to wonder, is if there's no one witnessing you, what kind of pleasure is there in life? Do we need someone witnessing us to be really happy in what we've become?
"I suppose it's some kind of profound understanding of ... what each of our struggles is. And if we're struggling along and no one is watching us or helping us or talking about it with us, sharing the triumphs; if no one is holding our hand when we're in the midst of that struggle ... [does] it deny that struggle some of its meaning because it's sort of in the interaction with other people that real understanding about our human condition occurs."
As the play goes on, Annie and Bonnie are increasingly destabilised not just by what Curtis and Tess do but by what they say and how they express themselves. "The lesbian couple, who are completely solid at the outset, begin to feel the tremors in their relationship as they respond to the other couple's split and suddenly this very, very composed, very stable, very middle class, very comfortable world of couples – the Couple Life, as they describe it somewhat patronisingly – that world becomes a battleground, deeply dangerous territory for them all psychologically."
Directed by Sarah Goodes, the play also stars Kate Atkinson, Peter Houghton and Katherine Tonkin.
On day three of rehearsals, Murray-Smith says "it's all pandemonium here" but feels the play is in pretty good shape. "Because it's about love and marriage and infidelity and betrayal, we keep seeing more fabulous moments for comedy and intrigue, so I'm trying to get away with embellishing the play before the actors say 'no more!'"
She is thrilled that the actors performing the play are doing the first readings of the work. "It gives us a massive head start," she says. "Not only can you sort the dramaturgy of the play and get that right, it also means that all the additions and tweakings and changes I've made have been made with a real sense of the physicality composition of the actor who's going to be saying that, what their strengths are, what their voice sounds like, what they bring effortlessly onto a stage and to be able to tweak with those people in mind, which is really thrilling for a writer.
"Just hearing it read for the first time is amazing, moving from this totally imagined set of voices inside your head to real voices with real personalities with real quirks and idiosyncrasies and fleshing out of these characters who have just emerged from a figment of your imagination."
While Three Little Words addresses many of the big questions in life, it is also infused with humour. "Quite a lot of the humour is to do with human beings thinking they're in control but actually they're not ... we state what we're going to do or we present a narrative to the world about what we want but our private lives are actually quite different and quite chaotic, far more flawed, far more contradictory," she says. "The characters reveal themselves in moments of high passion, when they don't realise what they're saying."
As in real life, the movement between comedy and pathos is very quick. "From moment to moment, it can go from the humour of the human condition to the tragedy of it."
Three Little Words is at The Sumner, Southbank Theatre, April 18-27. mtc.com.au