After an extensive period of writing for film, Louis Nowra returns to the stage with The Boyce Trilogy, an epic saga about the Boyce family, a family made wealthy through property development.
The Woman with Dog’s Eyes introduces us to the Boyce family as they gather to celebrate the parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Inspired by events that traumatised Sydney’s Moran family, the play explores the universal themes of family, love and disappointment.
In The Marvellous Boy Malcolm Boyce is dying at a time when his biggest building project—and so his whole empire—is threatened by protesters. He hires a criminal, the charismatic Ray Pollard, to threaten his enemies. As his son Luke falls under Ray’s spell, as well as that of his father’s mistress, we witness Luke’s transition from detachment into an emotional involvement that will be liberating, until the consequences of his and his father’s moral duplicity emerge.
In The Emperor of Sydney, the three sons fight for control of the company as their father lays dying. The company is near bankruptcy because of a huge stalled project (their father’s personal vision) and they face a criminal investigation into the father’s role in the suspicious death of the project’s outspoken critic.