Over roast turkey and glasses of wine, modern playwrights across the western canon have mined the domestic as a vessel for the societal; the politics of their dinner tables tend to capture the concerns and anxieties of the time and place in which they are written and staged – the state of a nation. Blessed Union, Maeve Marsden’s debut play at Belvoir St Theatre as part of Sydney WorldPride, continues that tradition, while hijacking the form to queer the preoccupations at its heart.
Ruth (Danielle Cormack, from TV’s Wentworth) and Judith (Maude Davey) have been together for 30 years. Their daughter Delilah (Emma Diaz) is at university, studying law, their son Asher (Jasper Lee-Lindsay) is chafing with his Catholic high school. The family meets up for a typical Easter meal, all eggs and tofu posing as lamb (on Isabel Hudson’s smartly detailed set), but Ruth and Judith have world-changing news to share: they are separating.
