RULES FOR LIVING

About the show

Meet the family. Edith is a highly-strung matriarch who prepares for lunch like it’s a military offensive. Youngest son Matthew, a frustrated actor and reluctant lawyer, longs for a different career … and for his brother’s wife. But Nicole, peeved and prickling for an argument, longs only for a drink. It’s Christmas – what could possibly go wrong? Sam Holcroft’s audacious script cranks the familial tension up to 11 using narrative tricks that clue the audience into a joke of which the hapless characters are unaware. Frenetically funny, Rules for Living is about all those expectations and roles that life sets upon us – and the tics and twitches that betray us when we struggle to shake them off. Susanna Dowling makes her STC directorial debut with a brilliant ensemble cast including Keegan Joyce (ABC TV's Please Like Me and Rake), Amber McMahon (Banging Denmark), Logie Award-winner Hazem Shammas, Bruce Spence (The Harp in the South), Sonia Todd (ABC TV's Rake and Channel 9's McLeod's Daughters), Nikita Waldron (Lord of the Flies), and Ella Jacob. Timed for the silly season, Rules For Living is the most deliciously dysfunctional Christmas lunch you’ll ever attend.