Shrine

A searing play about the way in which we try to own our dead, and the way in which they come to own us.

A year after the death of their son Jack in an early-morning car crash, Adam and Mary Mansfield are still struggling with what happened. Adam has sold his winery, and his trips to the beach house have become more frequent – anything to avoid Mary's silent suffering. One day he encounters a young woman he used to employ as a cellarhand. June knows her way around a vineyard, and she also knows a lot about Jack. It's a story she needs to share with Adam, the story of his son's final hours.

Set above the rocky headlands of the south coast of Western Australia, between forest and sea, Tim Winton's third play untangles a domestic heartbreak that has morphed into mythology, in a landscape inhabited by ghosts.

About the Author

Tim Winton has published twenty-five books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows,Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.