A Critical Stages & Ellen Belloo Production
Motherland
by Katherine Lyall-Watson

Motherland is a play about three remarkable real women based on an incredible true story. One of those women is Nelle Tritton, a Brisbane socialite who married Russia’s deposed Prime Minister, Alexander Kerensky, and helped him escape from the Nazis during the Second World War.
This is passionate, gripping, contemporary theatre, weaving multiple stories of home, belonging, love and loss spanning decades, continents and revolutions. It will appeal to a wide audience with its theatrical, contemporary and highly engaging depiction of true stories.
‘Motherland’ is based on the lives of three real women (one Australian and two Russians) as they seek to find places for themselves in a world that is in turmoil. The play spans the twentieth century, three continents, World War and revolution. It is also the story of a love between two women that couldn’t be named or celebrated because of the era in which they lived.
Time and place collides and interweaves as the actors play multiple characters, switching between them with barely a moment to draw breath. Motherland is a tapestry of friendship, displacement, home, and identity – a finely-crafted story of the casualties of love, ambition, and politics.
Nelle Tritton was born and raised in Brisbane but was obsessed with all things Russian. She moved to Europe where she met, worked for and then married the exiled Russian Prime Minister, Alexander Kerensky.
Nina Berberova was a Russian writer exiled from her homeland and living in Europe at the time of WWII. She was also a woman who described herself as having two sexes: walking the streets of Paris at night, dressed as a man.
Alyona was a Russian historian and museum curator who met an Australian businessman while she was preparing an exhibition on Nina’s life. She was a single mother, lured to Australia with the promise of endless Pizza Hut and sunshine, only to discover that the Fitzgerald Inquiry was in full force in Queensland and her husband’s business was bankrupt.

Author: Caroline Dunphy. Set Design: Penny Challen. Associate Designer: Annie Robertson. Lighting Design: David Walters. Composer/ Sound Design: Dane Alexander.
Cast: Kerith Atkinson, Peter Cossar, Barbara Lowing, Daniel Murphy & Rebecca Riggs.