Tom Davies' new work The Chain Bridge takes on important questions of truth, history and writing.

Academic Imre (Peter Cook) is finishing a book about family history and the events that brought his mother Eva (Geraldine Turner) and her friends from Budapest to Melbourne. But he is troubled, as is his academic wife Sarah (Kate Hosking) by inconsistencies. The records do not seem to fully support Eva's stories. Without rigour in the research, the book will not support his ongoing career.

It's the questions that he and Sarah throw at their mother and her friends Katalin (Zsuzsi Soboslay) and Jozsef (P.J. Williams) at a dinner party that form the basis for a long and emotive exploration of the Hungarians' past.

These elegant, knowledgeable, sophisticated refugees from the destruction of World War II and the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956 are experts at deflecting any deep discussion of verifiable truth. Jozsef brings out the photo album but the images are not academic proof.

Emotional truths about events, suffering, identities and betrayals are clearly another matter. And why should anyone revisit past pain just so Imre's career can advance?

The story is unravelled in flashbacks to war, revolution and the first arrival in Australia, with the cast adeptly playing multiple roles and ages.

Issues of collaboration and betrayal emerge. Is survival more important than politics? Do personal relationships compel loyalties? And at one telling moment, the Song of Australia suggests a nationalism as potentially oppressive as the events in Europe.

Director Caroline Stacey drives the piece at a good pace, while still allowing moments of humour and reflection. Rapid and fluid playing is enabled by the half-darknesses of Imogen Keen's set, shaping space with scaffolding and Gillian Schwab's carefully selective lighting. Both take full advantage of the depth, height and strange crannies of the stripped-back Street stage.

Cook, as the son Imre, stands uncertainly between his mother's past and his own Australian present. Hosking as Sarah is stubborn and morally persistent in her attempts to nail down Eva's story to facts. Soboslay as the graceful Katalin, beautifully dressed, teams well with Williams as her good-humoured husband and Turner's Eva, particularly when they deplore Sarah's cooking. But Katalin and Jozsef may also be masking the past.

Turner carries the central role with presence and power, successfully playing Eva from a lost five-year-old to an ageing matriarch at the dinner party. Her hair is sculpted and her makeup almost mask-like as she evokes the woman who has survived. But this character is also capable of reminding her son gently (and perhaps ironically) that he needs to be a good husband, the inference being that this might matter more than academic accuracy.

At nearly three hours, this is a long piece full of ideas and images that perhaps could use pruning. The Chain Bridge of the title, destroyed and rebuilt, suggests an ongoing attempt to reconcile factual truth with family stories and the demands of historical rigour. There is also the question of Imre's job prospects and the pain that the stories and semi-truths might mask. There are a moral dilemma or two in there that are thought-provoking.