The title ‘Catch as Catch Can’ carries an evocative historical resonance. Originally a style of submission wrestling that made its way into the early modern Olympic Games, “catch-as-catch-can” was defined by a stark absence of restrictive rules where almost any hold, tactic, or maneuver was permissible to pin down an opponent. Idiomatically, it has come to mean achieving an outcome by any means possible.
In Mia Chung’s play, presented by Empress Theatre and directed with sharp intelligence by Anna Houston, this brutal ethos becomes a haunting metaphor for domestic survival. Here, two generations grapple for control, stability, and love by any means possible. The younger generation—Tim, Lon, and Robbie—yearn desperately for an escape, yet every path, be it a new job, marriage, or parenthood, feels like a trap. To survive, they resort to hiding relationships, feigning composure, and manufacturing facades. Meanwhile, their parents, Theresa and Roberta, yearn for the exact opposite: despite wanting to give their children freedom, they struggle to let go and stop interfering, by leveraging guilt, emotional manipulation, and heavy-handed family role pressure to keep their offspring tethered to the past.
Set within two working-class American families of Italian and Irish origin, ‘Catch as Catch Can’ operates beneath a surface of everyday conversations and occasional flashes of dark, witty humor. Yet beneath those conversational surface ripples lies a complex web of family tensions, unspoken expectations, and deep emotional wounds.
When Tim returns home, the quiet rhythm of his mother’s and neighbors’ lives is shattered. His presence drags old, buried tensions back into the light, culminating in an emotional breakdown that alters the entire atmosphere of the play. Suddenly, the fragility beneath their ordinary routines becomes impossible to ignore, leaving the audience to sit with the uncomfortable realities of family life and the lasting effects of trauma.
While Chung’s script provides a fascinating psychological jigsaw puzzle, the undisputed crown of this production belongs to its virtuoso ensemble. Three actors play six characters, seamlessly crossing boundaries of age and gender without relying on full costume changes or gimmicky transformations. Robin McLeavy plays both Lon and Daniela Lavecchia, David Soncin plays Roberta Lavecchia and Robbie, and Andre de Vanny plays Tim Phelan and his mother, Theresa.
To watch these three deliver a performance of such extraordinary precision, physical control, and emotional depth is nothing short of thrilling. Without costume changes to rely on, the transformations happen entirely through posture, vocal timbre, rhythm, and intention. One moment an actor embodies the rigid, watchful stance of an aging parent; a beat later, with a subtle shift in weight or breath, they become an anxious adult child navigating a fraught conversation.
Robin McLeavy is particularly outstanding, conveying profound emotional pain and the shock of traumatic experiences with an intensity and vulnerability that are difficult to look away from. There is something raw and deeply affecting in her performance that makes her character’s distress feel painfully real. David Soncin and Andre de Vanny match her with brilliant versatility, sustaining the shifting world of the play and keeping the emotional pressure cooker boiling.
Dark, complex, and disturbing—yet illuminated by moments of humor— ‘Catch as Catch Can’ is a demanding and deeply rewarding piece of theatre.
To book tickets to Catch as Catch Can, please visit https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/catch-as-catch-can.
Photographer: Phil Erbacher
