On the face of it, the show currently playing at the Kings Cross Theatre is a domestic drama.  Set in one location, a loving couple are united against an invisible enemy.  That is until a complication arises.  Will they stay together, or will this impediment drive them apart.  It’s classic melodrama isn’t it?  But not here. ARE WE AWAKE? is a confluence of alternative dialectics about love, disability and identity molded, without rage, into a thing of beauty.

Our loving couple are Endymion and Hypnos and they are united against Hypnos’ advancing illness which is making him progressively less able to be independent.  Endymion is obviously in for the long haul but the pair have made a difficult decision.  Endymion is moving, from Sydney to Melbourne for work, a job that will provide the financial security that the couple obviously require.  We meet them on the morning of his leaving.

And there is such joy in the meeting.  The chemistry between the two cast members is especially delicious to just sit back and enjoy in this first part of the play as we get to know them and their coupledom.  Daniel Monks is Hypnos and Mathew Lee, Endymion.  And they are wonderful together.  From the richly comic to the heartbreakingly rational, every little gesture screams intimacy, every comment has the shorthand of long acquaintance.

Here, too, the direction by Sarah Hadley shows a steady hand by allowing the work to rise and fall with the subtext of the characters.  Like the tiny detail in the fleeting use of a baby voice, just for a phrase, a beat, before the man appears once more.  The work ebbs and flows seamlessly, at moments blurred as if looking through the distortion of plastic curtain that, hospice like, borders the space.  At other moments the power of the text is pinpointed with crystal clarity.

And it’s a fine text. Charles O’Grady has constructed the play with a solid reality, a lightness of touch and for such a thought-provoking work, a complete lack of preach.  The story and the tension are supremely well developed but audience engagement in ARE WE AWAKE? is also nurtured by several realism side-steps.  Times when we converge together in the mind of Hypnos as Dexamethasone agitates his sleeping.  Sometimes these excursions are joyful, other sequences carry the weight of his fears in the mouth of his lover.  Who is also, like it or not, his carer.

Beautifully written, Endymion expresses all the competing emotions of a carer.  The loss of self, the struggle for your own identity, the pussyfooting around his lover’s mood swings, the physical nature of caring.  And, if you have been a carer, you know it is coming … the fighting about money.

But these two are really united in fighting the grief of illness.  Yet, they are to be separated.  “Fine” means different things to each of them and “Sorry … I mean… thank you” benchmarks the bargain they have struck to be rational and focused.  Cleverly lit by Martin Kinanne, the logical stands stark against the emotional as our lovers move closer to the moment of leaving.  And make no mistake, they are ours …

ARE WE AWAKE? Is having a short season at Kings Cross Theatre and it is not to be missed.