Stollery content to swap big casts for a bigger role Christopher Stollery and Erica Lovell are pictured at the Ensemble Theatre in Kirribilli where they are starring in the play Great Falls. Picture: Tim Hunter Source: The Daily Telegraph LAST year was a big one for Christopher Stollery. Not just in terms of keeping busy - he's one of the most consistently booked stage actors in the country. It was also a big year for him joining big casts with big names: in the touring production of Death Of A Salesman with Colin Friels (a cast of eight), His Girl Friday with Philip Quast (16) and Gross Und Klein with Cate Blanchett (15). Later this year he's off to do Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead with Tim Minchin and Toby Schmitz for the Sydney Theatre Company. Little wonder he's loving getting stuck into Ensemble Theatre's two-hander Great Falls alongside Erica Lovell. "It's good to get your teeth into something where you're there from beginning to end," he says. Now it's like, well, no more cups of tea and crosswords backstage, which is great. Written by US playwright Lee Blessing in 2008, Great Falls tells the story of a middle-aged man ("Monkeyman") who takes his former stepdaughter ("Bitch") on an uncalled-for and impromptu road trip through the North American wilds, in an effort to connect with her following the breakdown of his marriage to her mother. "She has a fairly obstinate attitude to men in general and to this gentleman in particular," Lovell says. Her objective for most of it is to disengage and make sure she does whatever she wants, but gradually we see her develop an appreciation of his condition and work towards an understanding of where he's coming from and for her that journey is coming to a better understanding of her own experiences in her family. Key to understanding the pair's verbal sparring is that both consider themselves writers, she says. "It's central to how they express themselves and how they fight their battles with each other in their different expressive styles and choices," Lovell says. Their linguistic choices are a really interesting way into the characters, so I think the writing is aware of itself as writing, and when we see these characters move from quick-fire, very naturalistic speech to more florid, poetic and expressive ways of engaging, it creates an interesting dynamic. Family dynamics these days are much more complicated, she adds, and the way women exist in society has also changed in recent decades. "We're coming out of a time when, for one reason or another, we always did define ourselves in relation to men - someone's daughter, someone's wife - and learning what your place is as a woman and defining yourself without relying on negative deferral is a really new social space and I think there's a lot of theatre coming out that deals with that," Lovell says. Twitter @EpicChook Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall St, Kirribilli; Saturday 5pm, until March 9, $32-$63, 9929 0644, ensemble.com.au