★★★½☆ Caleb Lewis’s new play offers a swarm of competing ideas with a sobering message.

Red Stitch Actors Theatre, St. Kilda
June 17, 2016

We need to talk about the bees. All over the planet, these insects are disappearing, and as vital pollinators of crops, our fate is bound to theirs. The root cause of the so-called “colony collapse disorder” isn’t fully understood. Some experts blame mites, others fungus, but what is known is that the main symptom is an inexplicable exodus, leaving the hive empty save for one helpless individual, the queen.

Insect behaviour is as far removed from human emotions as it’s possible to be, but that doesn’t stop us anthropomorphising this deadly scenario. The queen is a mother abandoned by her children; the hive, a home transformed into a tomb. These parallels have been the scaffolding on which Caleb Lewis has hung the tense, intimate drama of his new play, innocuously titled The Honey Bees. Rather than looking at the global, ecological impact of bee death, Lewis focuses in on a far more parochial framework, exploring the strained dynamics of a West Australian family of beekeepers.

In the remote, red-earthed outback...