Controlled Burn, Camden People’s Theatre – Review

Family dynamics are an eternal source of conflict – as perennial as death and taxes. But when it comes to mother/daughter or sister/sister dynamics, that’s something that the Arts have explored exponentially in the last 60 years or so. Notable examples include Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects (which was made into an HBO series), and showed the tensions between a woman, her mother and her younger sister when she returned to her childhood home in smalltown America for a work assignment. But while the likes of Tracy Betts’ August: Osage County show the effect of a vitriolic matriarch on her daughters, as well their husbands and children – for most people ‘ugly’ family scenes are ‘smaller’, but spread over a longer time span… Written and performed by Crystalia Varelis, Controlled Burn could be said to have adopted a Rashomon-style structure, with the audience seeing the same situation and period from the perspective of three family members. Framing the play with a narrative of wildfires in…

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