tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/theatre-review-12415/articlesTheatre review – The Conversation2024-03-14T23:25:51Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230052024-03-14T23:25:51Z2024-03-14T23:25:51ZLove, loss and tears – but also laughter: Belvoir’s compelling and skilful staging of Holding the Man<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582076/original/file-20240314-22-9tv5zm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C1281%2C1908&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Belvoir</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Walking through Chippendale on my way to Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre, where this production of Holding the Man is playing, I pass by the York Theatre. This was the theatre where, in 1985, Timothy Conigrave, author of the original memoir upon which the play is based, was rehearsing a touring show of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs. He had to excuse himself from one rehearsal for an appointment where he learned his HIV-positive diagnosis. </p>
<p>Then, walking up the hill to Surry Hills, I get to the Belvoir Street Theatre itself. Five years after that initial diagnosis, Conigrave’s play, Thieving Boy, was getting its first rehearsed reading at the Belvoir. He wasn’t able to attend because he’d been kept in hospital with <em>Pneumocystis</em> pneumonia, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907978/">PCP</a>, an AIDS-defining illness.</p>
<p>To watch this revival of Tommy Murphy’s beautifully crafted adaptation of Conigrave’s memoir at the Belvoir is to inhabit spaces that are filled with the book’s memories. </p>
<p>One of the things that memoir can do is to hold a space open for memories to live on in the world, personal memories that would otherwise be lost. Conigrave’s 1995 book, Holding the Man, is a rare gift, perfectly capturing what it was like to grow up gay in the decades just before the arrival of HIV. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/holding-the-man-and-bringing-hiv-aids-in-australia-to-a-mainstream-audience-43250">Holding the Man, and bringing HIV/AIDS in Australia to a mainstream audience</a>
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<h2>Noticing the small things</h2>
<p>At the book’s heart is a joyous love story between Tim and his high school sweetheart, John Caleo. There is, of course, the overarching trajectory of John’s death and the impact of HIV on their friends and families. But the book works its remarkable magic on a reader by disarming you with the tiny details of somebody’s life.</p>
<p>It is the small things that are often the most affecting in Conigrave’s writing: what people were wearing, what they were listening to, how they looked in certain turns of the light, the awkwardness and fun of sex, what made them smile or laugh.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582077/original/file-20240314-30-o1sneg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Actors on stage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582077/original/file-20240314-30-o1sneg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582077/original/file-20240314-30-o1sneg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582077/original/file-20240314-30-o1sneg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582077/original/file-20240314-30-o1sneg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582077/original/file-20240314-30-o1sneg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582077/original/file-20240314-30-o1sneg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582077/original/file-20240314-30-o1sneg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tom Conroy is superb in the central role.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Belvoir</span></span>
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<p>Eamon Flack’s production captures well – and with a lovely, light touch – this sense of fleeting memories that are, nevertheless, still available to us. Tom Conroy is superb in the central role. He takes us from nine-year-old Tim to grieving lover with all of the empathy and playfulness that the part requires. Neither Conigrave’s book nor Murphy’s script shy away from Tim’s flaws; he is, at times, petulant and selfish, but always charming, recognisable and human. </p>
<p>Conroy is joined by a wonderful cast: Danny Ball as John, his lover, but also an ensemble of four performers (Russell Dykstra, Rebecca Massey, Guy Simon and Shannen Alyce Quan) who cycle through all the other people in Tim’s life. They are all great, but special mentions for Massey who wears more wigs than Cher and revels in every part. Guy Simon’s two appearances as a schoolfriend’s mum are also an absolute joy.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582078/original/file-20240314-20-vsrtmi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cast dance on a pink stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582078/original/file-20240314-20-vsrtmi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582078/original/file-20240314-20-vsrtmi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582078/original/file-20240314-20-vsrtmi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582078/original/file-20240314-20-vsrtmi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582078/original/file-20240314-20-vsrtmi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582078/original/file-20240314-20-vsrtmi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582078/original/file-20240314-20-vsrtmi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Eamon Flack’s production balances tears and laughter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Belvoir</span></span>
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<p>The wit, charm and love of the opening act (schoolboy crushes, dancing, music and a lot of laughter) are balanced well with the pathos of the second half (the endurance of love, loss and tears, but also more laughter). Flack’s direction knits together the constant shifts in focus – an essential part of memoir and of memory plays – with an ease that only seems effortless; this is a compelling and skilful use of stage and script.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/class-queerness-and-illness-in-the-post-crisis-era-rewriting-the-narrative-of-hiv-176466">Class, queerness and illness in the ‘post-crisis’ era: rewriting the narrative of HIV</a>
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<h2>A timely reminder</h2>
<p>This is also a production that knows it is addressing an audience in 2024, not in 1995, when Conigrave’s book was first published, nor in 2006 when Murphy’s adaptation was first staged. We’ve lived through a lot since, not only the bruising marriage equality vote in Australia, but also a global sense that the lives of queer people might be newly under threat. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582075/original/file-20240314-22-ffziqi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1275%2C1913&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men kiss" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582075/original/file-20240314-22-ffziqi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1275%2C1913&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582075/original/file-20240314-22-ffziqi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582075/original/file-20240314-22-ffziqi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582075/original/file-20240314-22-ffziqi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582075/original/file-20240314-22-ffziqi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582075/original/file-20240314-22-ffziqi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582075/original/file-20240314-22-ffziqi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">This production captures the sense of fleeting memories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Belvoir</span></span>
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<p>The lives and loves of gay men, our friends and families, are unavoidably threaded through (pulled apart and drawn together) by what happened in the 1980s and 1990s. This production is an important and timely reminder of what was lost, what was gained, and of the precious memories that we need to keep alive.</p>
<p>On the day of the opening night, the NSW parliament was hearing the first reading of a bill that would <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-13/gay-conversion-therapy-nsw-parliament-explainer/103580746">outlaw gay conversion practices</a>, the victims of which testify to its corrosive and violent impact on their lives. </p>
<p>Here’s hoping the ban on such practices is one more step in restoring joy to the lives of queer kids in our city and state. </p>
<p><em>Holding the Man is at Belvoir, Sydney, until April 14.</em> </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/treatments-as-torture-gay-conversion-therapys-deep-roots-in-australia-95588">'Treatments' as torture: gay conversion therapy's deep roots in Australia</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223005/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Griffiths does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Eamon Flack’s production captures well – and with a lovely, light touch – the sense of fleeting memories that are, nevertheless, still available to us.Huw Griffiths, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2253402024-03-12T03:35:39Z2024-03-12T03:35:39ZRespect and disrespect clash throughout 37 – a brilliant new play exploring Australian Rules Football<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581116/original/file-20240311-26-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C9%2C1592%2C1053&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/MTC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Guernsey number 37 belonged to Aboriginal star football player Adam Goodes when he played for Sydney Swans. Goodes was loved by the AFL and spectators, admired for his skill and leadership for most of his outstanding career. Goodes loved his job and he was a role model for younger generations. </p>
<p>But something went wrong.</p>
<p>It was May 2013, the “Indigenous Round”. Goodes’ team was playing against Collingwood. A 13-year-old Collingwood fan <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/goodes-gutted-after-racial-slur-20130525-2k7gj.html">yelled at Goodes</a> and called him “an ape”. </p>
<p>Overhearing this, Goodes asked security to have the girl removed from the stadium. There were supporters of Goodes and supporters of the girl. The media focus was intense. </p>
<p>In 2014, Goodes was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/25/adam-goodes-wins-australian-year">awarded Australian of the Year</a>. This fitted the climate: get things back on track; do something positive. </p>
<p>In 2015, after kicking a goal, Goodes <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-30/bradley-goodes-war-dance-reveals-our-moral-confusion/6657960">celebrated with a cultural dance</a> in front of Collingwood fans. The dance ended when Goodes threw an imaginary spear. Performed by Aboriginal men across Australia, the “spear dance” symbolises when men are facing other men from a different clan/tribe for war – like teams facing each other before the siren. </p>
<p>The dance was mistaken to represent something else by AFL spectators across Australia: a war dance and spearing all white people. </p>
<p>From then, Goodes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jul/29/afl-great-adam-goodes-is-being-booed-across-australia-how-did-it-come-to-this">was booed</a> across Australia whenever he played. The intensity of the media and the debates raging made him hate being on the football field. </p>
<p>After 18 years of playing elite football – 372 games, 464 goals, two Brownlow Medals, two premierships – Goodes <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/allanclarke/adam-goodes-breaks-his-silence">left the game in silence</a>.</p>
<p>Today Goodes is a mentor and a cultural warrior outside the game. He has established a foundation to support youth with their identity and culture while at school and university. </p>
<p>The incidents are referenced in the play 37, from playwright Nathan Maynard. We watch a local football team gathered around a television to watch the game that ended it all for Goodes.</p>
<p>The best player of the team, Jayma (Ngali Shaw), is Aboriginal, and arrives to watch the game proudly wearing the Swans Indigenous Round guernsey with 37 on the back. Jayma is confronted by negative comments made about Goodes. </p>
<p>Then they watch Goodes celebrate with the spear dance. </p>
<p>The banter is no longer funny and the tension and disregard to the Aboriginal player honouring his idol is an insult to the team. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-afl-sells-an-inclusive-image-of-itself-but-when-it-comes-to-race-and-gender-it-still-has-a-way-to-go-124351">The AFL sells an inclusive image of itself. But when it comes to race and gender, it still has a way to go</a>
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<h2>Pushed to the edge</h2>
<p>Australia loves sport – even more so with a good drama. 37 has it all and more: history, gems of insight into black and white aspirations, cultural dance, swearing, sporty actors, young and old men in their element as they bond to play football with hopes of winning a premiership. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581117/original/file-20240311-24-u1thdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Men sit on benches." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581117/original/file-20240311-24-u1thdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581117/original/file-20240311-24-u1thdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581117/original/file-20240311-24-u1thdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581117/original/file-20240311-24-u1thdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581117/original/file-20240311-24-u1thdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581117/original/file-20240311-24-u1thdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581117/original/file-20240311-24-u1thdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">37 is set in the locker room of a local football club.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/MTC</span></span>
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<p>Directed by Isaac Drandic, 37 opens with Jayma showing us the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/blog/afls-aboriginal-origins">Marngrook</a>, the Gunditjmara/Aboriginal word for a team game kicking and marking a possum-skin ball. The game would go on for days. Jayma and Sonny (Tibian Wyles) identify as “Marngrook cousins”; a minority in a majority non-Aboriginal team.</p>
<p>Like Goodes, the team starts out great: they bond and have a great time. As the play progresses, Aboriginal and white relations change and mateship is put to the test. </p>
<p>The team dream about winning the premiership, and we watch them in the locker room where the players change pre- and post-game. There are hopes and aspirations for every team member, but the Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581118/original/file-20240311-18-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Ngali Shaw and Tibian Wyles sit on the edge of the stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581118/original/file-20240311-18-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581118/original/file-20240311-18-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581118/original/file-20240311-18-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581118/original/file-20240311-18-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581118/original/file-20240311-18-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581118/original/file-20240311-18-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581118/original/file-20240311-18-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Aboriginal players carry burdens the other team members do not.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/MTC</span></span>
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<p>Jayma’s father has a history with the football club - he was a star player in the team – but didn’t show up for the final game – costing the club a premiership. There are other stories of parents and their behaviour. The team learns of the contract the Aboriginal players signed to be paid for playing; Sonny explains the contract is helping his family to pay rent, buy food and items for the kids.</p>
<p>The highs and lows of 37 are centred around winning the premiership. As the season progresses they are winning, but the mateship becomes less friendly. What starts as happy banter changes. The jokes take on a sinister tone. How long will these team mates tolerate such personal comments? Even the coach, “The General” (Syd Brisbane), gets pushed to the edge when his wife is targeted. </p>
<p>When the siren sounds, aggression on the footy fields subsides – but for the Aboriginal players, the confusion and disappointment lingers. </p>
<h2>Levelling the playing field</h2>
<p>Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience to witness the uncomfortable perspectives around the Goodes incident, raising ideas about family, success and trauma. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581119/original/file-20240311-22-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The coach yells at the team." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581119/original/file-20240311-22-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581119/original/file-20240311-22-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581119/original/file-20240311-22-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581119/original/file-20240311-22-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581119/original/file-20240311-22-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581119/original/file-20240311-22-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581119/original/file-20240311-22-y65idw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Maynard tackles difficult topics, using his talent to poke and prod the audience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/MTC</span></span>
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<p>It is a wonderfully athletic cast – a spectacular fast warm-up shows the cast’s sporting skills, and Drandic carefully plays with tension. We observe how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal team mates try to support each other against other team members’ comments that leave us stunned – but then another comment is made and we’re even more stunned.</p>
<p>But some things said can not be diffused, not even by the cultural awareness program a team member was ordered to attend.</p>
<p>Among the racial backlash, and in a tribute to Goodes, the Marngrook Cousins perform a mesmerising spear dance to illustrate their pride and strength. </p>
<p>Respect and disrespect clash throughout the play leaving us guessing and bracing ourselves – even, perhaps, embarrassed. I walked away from the show in awe of Maynard’s ability to apply history to the stage. I hope audiences can keep learning about Goodes, and continue levelling the playing field against racism in sport. </p>
<p><em>37 is at the Melbourne Theatre Company until April 5.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-long-and-complicated-history-of-aboriginal-involvement-in-football-117669">The long and complicated history of Aboriginal involvement in football</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225340/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Andrews is a member of the Rumbalara Aboriginal Football and Netball Association. </span></em></p>Playwright Nathan Maynard uses the story of Adam Goodes to explore race in a local footy club.Julie Andrews, Professor and Academic Director (Indigenous Research), La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2253432024-03-08T02:30:39Z2024-03-08T02:30:39ZThe magic tricks and the deep souls of theatre, dance and music at the 2024 Perth Festival<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580586/original/file-20240308-22-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C0%2C1914%2C1279&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Perth Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During last October’s launch event for the 2024 Perth Festival of the arts, the presentation offered by artistic director Iain Grandage implied that the festival would touch on various timely global political issues. </p>
<p>Across the program, which wrapped up on Sunday, I was struck by how it was often more in the act of putting on and performing the work, rather than their spoken content, that expressed political responses to our times – a few good trick-style shows aside.</p>
<h2>The magic of performance</h2>
<p>Belgian theatre collective Ontroerend Goed and performance artist Geoff Sobelle both focused on theatrical illusion. </p>
<p>Ontroerend Goed’s Are we not drawn onward to new erA was promoted as an “inventive palindromic eco-drama”, while <a href="https://list.co.uk/news/43701/geoff-sobelle-food-theatre-review-a-messy-meal-filled-with-confidence">one critic</a> reflected on how Sobelle’s Food alluded to “the consequences for the environment” of global human food consumption, but “without drawing any clear conclusions”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580588/original/file-20240308-18-bs1pct.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580588/original/file-20240308-18-bs1pct.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580588/original/file-20240308-18-bs1pct.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580588/original/file-20240308-18-bs1pct.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580588/original/file-20240308-18-bs1pct.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580588/original/file-20240308-18-bs1pct.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580588/original/file-20240308-18-bs1pct.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580588/original/file-20240308-18-bs1pct.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ontroerend Goed focused on theatrical illusion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mirjam Devriendt/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Act one of Are we not drawn reworked the idea that underpins <a href="https://theconversation.com/tenet-is-marvellous-a-staggeringly-ambitious-blend-of-popular-effects-and-complex-storytelling-144872">Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020)</a> to run a scene backwards before a filmed recording was then projected in reverse – in the “right” order. </p>
<p>Sobelle spent much of his show producing food out of nowhere, or disappearing remnants of a gargantuan meal down his throat, before offering a familiar narrative of colonial development. He dug toy bison out of a massive sand box, before burying them again as he unearthed farms, stations and skyscrapers. </p>
<p>Are we not drawn and Food were entrancing magic tricks, but beyond witnessing Ontroerend Goed’s performers make a mess and topple a statue, not much was learned. (The improvised removal of <a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-museum-display-what-happens-next-for-the-fallen-statue-162376">Edward Colston’s statue</a> was more dynamic.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-museum-display-what-happens-next-for-the-fallen-statue-162376">Edward Colston museum display: what happens next for the fallen statue</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A wonderfully weird opera</h2>
<p>The opera Wundig wer Wilura presented a different approach. Composed, conducted and sung in Noongar by 30 First Nations artists, the staging itself was a statement. </p>
<p>The piece charted tensions between Noongar groups from what is now York, Western Australia, and two lovers – one from each group – were forbidden to marry but eloped, starting a war. A clever man, or sorcerer, intervened, turning combatants into grass trees and the lovers into hills.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580589/original/file-20240308-18-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580589/original/file-20240308-18-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580589/original/file-20240308-18-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580589/original/file-20240308-18-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580589/original/file-20240308-18-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580589/original/file-20240308-18-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580589/original/file-20240308-18-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580589/original/file-20240308-18-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wundig wer Wilura shares characteristics with Wagner’s famous ring cycle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">West Beach Studio/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wundig wer Wilura shares characteristics with Wagner’s famous ring cycle: epic figures from a mythic era express passion and violence in the face of otherworldly forces. </p>
<p>Composed in a sweeping yet low-key orchestral mode by Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse, passages reminded me of fragments from popular sources such as The Divinyls’ Pleasure and Pain, the lightly musicalised speech patterns of 10CC’s Dreadlock Holiday, and Kate Bush’s dramatic pop-meets-classical style. </p>
<p>Ian Wilkes’ choreography had the cast in near constant motion, but none seemed overwrought. Where Wagner’s characters scream or plummet earthwards, Wundig wer Wilura’s were melancholy rather than epic.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580590/original/file-20240308-21-b4eax6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580590/original/file-20240308-21-b4eax6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580590/original/file-20240308-21-b4eax6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580590/original/file-20240308-21-b4eax6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580590/original/file-20240308-21-b4eax6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580590/original/file-20240308-21-b4eax6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580590/original/file-20240308-21-b4eax6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580590/original/file-20240308-21-b4eax6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Leha was a compellingly otherworldly presence in an otherwise sympathetically human drama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">West Beach Studio/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a settler-descent critic with a liking for Wagner and the avant garde, I found the production best at its weirdest. David Leha as the clever man was strikingly attired in a puffy costume swelling his shoulders, pointing a staff as he sang in staggered bursts. He was a compellingly otherworldly presence in an otherwise sympathetically human drama.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yhonnie-scarces-glass-works-are-a-glistening-poignant-exploration-of-how-nuclear-testing-affected-first-nations-people-221868">Yhonnie Scarce's glass works are a glistening, poignant exploration of how nuclear testing affected First Nations people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Lyricism and commentary</h2>
<p>Entrancing for different reasons was the formal exactness of Joan Jonas’ performance Mirror Piece I and II (1969-70/2024). Originally documented through still images, the choreography performed between tableaux for the Perth Festival production was essentially new.</p>
<p>Jonas’ video art often explored issues of voyeurism, surveillance and narcissism. In Mirror Piece, the audience is positioned partly as narcissistic voyeurs, invited to gaze at themselves and their peers in the mirrors while also watching staggered, linear configurations of these rectangles of glass manipulated by focused, fashionable performers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580591/original/file-20240308-30-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580591/original/file-20240308-30-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580591/original/file-20240308-30-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580591/original/file-20240308-30-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580591/original/file-20240308-30-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580591/original/file-20240308-30-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580591/original/file-20240308-30-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580591/original/file-20240308-30-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mirror Piece is partly a study in voyeurism, surveillance and narcissism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Perth Institute of Contemporary Art/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The unadorned precision of the movements and variety of arrangements had its own lyricism, quite apart from any social commentary.</p>
<p>Wilder in structure was the politicised jazz-fusion ensemble Irreversible Entanglements. The quintet recalled Sun Ra’s free jazz fantasies, the Africanist stylings of Idris Ackamoor and the verbal potency of Gil Scott Heron. </p>
<p>Five artists performed independent jazzy scribbles and meandering blurts, before coming together for sometimes funky sections (think Herbie Hancock) or harmonious stepped chords. The performers supplemented vocals, drums, bass, saxophone and trumpet with electronics and other instruments, drifting into Jah Wobble territory.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580595/original/file-20240308-22-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man plays a trumpet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580595/original/file-20240308-22-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580595/original/file-20240308-22-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580595/original/file-20240308-22-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580595/original/file-20240308-22-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580595/original/file-20240308-22-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580595/original/file-20240308-22-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580595/original/file-20240308-22-8hyrjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The politicised jazz-fusion ensemble Irreversible Entanglements performed independent jazzy scribbles and meandering blurts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Francesca/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Vocalist Moor Mother urgently repeated her concise phrases, the use of voice musical and percussive more than poetic. </p>
<p>The din offered by the group was at once tense and flowing, epitomising how people of different backgrounds can produce a unified collective without surrendering their identities: <a href="https://theconversation.com/anarchy-in-the-usa-five-years-on-the-legacy-of-occupy-wall-street-and-what-it-can-teach-us-in-the-age-of-trump-68452">anarcho-syndicalism</a> as musical performance.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580596/original/file-20240308-28-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman sings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580596/original/file-20240308-28-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580596/original/file-20240308-28-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580596/original/file-20240308-28-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580596/original/file-20240308-28-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580596/original/file-20240308-28-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580596/original/file-20240308-28-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580596/original/file-20240308-28-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vocalist Moor Mother was musical and percussive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Francesca/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soul legends Cymande were another standout, with complex funky song structures, often featuring different arrangements in the same piece. </p>
<p>They powered through their best-known song Bra two-thirds in, but later brought the crowd to an exultant conclusion. A well-oiled soul machine of a three-piece brass section, drums, congas, keyboards, bass and guitar, it was fantastic performance by what is now an exemplar for orchestrated creolised soul.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580598/original/file-20240308-24-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man at a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580598/original/file-20240308-24-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580598/original/file-20240308-24-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580598/original/file-20240308-24-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580598/original/file-20240308-24-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580598/original/file-20240308-24-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580598/original/file-20240308-24-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580598/original/file-20240308-24-hd5iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soul legends Cymande were a standout.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Francesca/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Politics and art</h2>
<p>Marrugeku’s Mutiara was the supreme example of politics melding with artistic form. </p>
<p>Marrugeku excels at taking cultural memories of oppression and turning them into conflicted yet energised choreography. </p>
<p>Mutiara is framed around the experience of First Nations, Malay and creole workers in the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/lustre-pearling-and-australia">Australian pearling industry</a> of the early 20th century. The dancers fight impulses from within, generating empowered choreographic expressions. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580599/original/file-20240308-30-bbvl9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: three dancers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580599/original/file-20240308-30-bbvl9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580599/original/file-20240308-30-bbvl9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580599/original/file-20240308-30-bbvl9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580599/original/file-20240308-30-bbvl9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580599/original/file-20240308-30-bbvl9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580599/original/file-20240308-30-bbvl9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580599/original/file-20240308-30-bbvl9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marrugeku extol at taking cultural memories of oppression and turning them into choreography.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The choreography is co-devised by performers Soultari Amin
Farid, Dalisa Pigram and Zee Zunnur, together with Ahmat Bin Fadal. It draws on Malay martial arts (<em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silat">silat</a></em>), First Nations and Malay dance and European dance theatre. Sequences are often marked by abrupt redirections of velocity. Although weaving and flowing, the movement often pauses or pops, before finding new ways out of each temporary arrest. The dancers break through barriers with almost every gesture.</p>
<p>In one eerie sequence, the dancers enter not quite staggering, with black wicker baskets over their heads, hands flailing in slow motion or pointing in awkward poses. Only later did I realise this sequence represented the dancers dreaming of being dressed in diving helmets while finding their way on the bottom of the ocean. </p>
<p>For many festival shows, just the act of putting on the show could be political, but Marrugeku focused on that most complex tool of political expression: the body.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-theatre-production-in-the-pool-this-new-play-in-perth-leaves-the-audience-buoyed-220665">A theatre production ... in the pool? This new play in Perth leaves the audience buoyed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan W. Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Across the program, I was struck by how it was often more in the act of putting on and performing the work, rather than their spoken content, that expressed political responses to our times.Jonathan W. Marshall, Associate Professor & Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2242712024-03-04T01:44:38Z2024-03-04T01:44:38ZCan you make a compelling play about economics? The Lehman Trilogy tries – but ultimately comes up short<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579454/original/file-20240304-48028-f7rssq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C8%2C5475%2C3630&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Can’t move ‘em with a cold thing, like economics.” </p>
<p>So says the modernist, Ezra Pound, in the first section of his epic poem, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cantos">The Cantos</a>. </p>
<p>This is something I kept coming back to while watching Stefano Massini’s five-time Tony Award-winning play, The Lehman Trilogy.</p>
<p>Opening in 1844 and and closing in 2008, The Lehman Trilogy is self-consciously ambitious and epic in scope, concerning the spectacular rise and fall of one of America’s biggest financial institutions: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers">Lehman Brothers</a>. </p>
<p>It strives to explain the historical development of American capitalism in a single evening. While admirable, this cannot disguise the fact that the play is also wildly uneven, and chooses, problematically, to omit important – and commonly known – information regarding the Lehman family: their support for the Confederacy, their direct involvement in the <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/online/2019/06/11/the-lehman-trilogy-and-wall-streets-debt-to-slavery/">slave</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-hole-at-the-heart-of-the-lehman-trilogy/2019/04/08/51f6ed8c-5a3e-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html">trade</a>, and the reasons behind the Global Financial Crisis, which ultimately led to the collapse of the financial institution they founded in 1850. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anniversary-of-lehmans-collapse-reminds-us-booms-are-often-followed-by-busts-102758">Anniversary of Lehman's collapse reminds us – booms are often followed by busts</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>An international phenomenon</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ecab7159-2f37-41c1-a419-3d4969c38dfa">cultural phenomenon</a> in his native Italy, Massini is one of the 21st century’s most celebrated dramatists. </p>
<p>Born in Florence in 1975, Massini started his career as an assistant director to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Ronconi">Luca Ronconi</a>, who encouraged him to try his hand at playwrighting. He has since gone on to produce works inspired by writers and artists such as Shelley, Kafka and Van Gogh.</p>
<p>The Lehman Trilogy, Massini’s most famous work, has a curious compositional history. It started out as a nine-hour radio play in 2012, before being reworked as a five-hour, three-act piece of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/nov/11/postdramatic-theatre-lehmann">post-dramatic theatre</a> written entirely in free verse. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579456/original/file-20240304-22-8ioo4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man on stage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579456/original/file-20240304-22-8ioo4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579456/original/file-20240304-22-8ioo4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579456/original/file-20240304-22-8ioo4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579456/original/file-20240304-22-8ioo4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579456/original/file-20240304-22-8ioo4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579456/original/file-20240304-22-8ioo4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579456/original/file-20240304-22-8ioo4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Lehman Trilogy has been through many iterations before this version made it to Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Lehman Trilogy debuted in Paris in 2013, was adapted by Massini into a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52584856">700-page novel</a> that year, and was staged in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/28/ronconi-lehman-trilogy-play-theatre">Italy</a> for the first time in 2015. This production featured 20 actors and was directed by Ronconi, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/28/ronconi-lehman-trilogy-play-theatre">who died</a> while the play was still being performed.</p>
<p>Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes and Ben Power, associate director of the National Theatre, developed a comparably lyrical English-language adaptation in 2018, and now this version of the play is being staged in Australia.</p>
<h2>A tighter retelling</h2>
<p>Directed by Mendes and featuring a live soundtrack performed by pianist Cat Beveridge, this creation departs from Massini’s original in a number of important ways. </p>
<p>Firstly, by comparison the show is significantly shorter, clocking in at relatively trim three-and-half hours. Secondly, it has a cast of only three. </p>
<p>Aaron Krohn, Howard W. Overshown and Adrian Schiller play a remarkable number of male and female characters, including the three German Jewish immigrants who, in 1850, established the family business that subsequently became Lehman Brothers.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579457/original/file-20240304-16-cyqhrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579457/original/file-20240304-16-cyqhrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579457/original/file-20240304-16-cyqhrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579457/original/file-20240304-16-cyqhrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579457/original/file-20240304-16-cyqhrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579457/original/file-20240304-16-cyqhrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579457/original/file-20240304-16-cyqhrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579457/original/file-20240304-16-cyqhrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The performances they deliver are uniformly excellent and engaging.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The performances they deliver are uniformly excellent and engaging. They never change costumes but transition seemlessly from character to character, delivering incredibly complex and detailed lines.</p>
<p>Es Devlin’s <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/the-stage-show/es-devlin-lehman-trilogy-dictionary-of-lost-words-pip-williams/103411032">set design</a> is equally memorable. The centre of the stage is taken up by a spinning glass box, in which the actors pace back and forth, stopping occasionally to scrawl and expunge names and numbers on the walls. The rest of the space is dominated by a panoramic digital display, which modulates as we move between different historical periods and geographical locales in the United States.</p>
<p>The first act opens with Henry Lehman setting foot on North American soil for the first time. After a short stint in New York City, Henry makes his way down south. He establishes himself as a goods trader in Montgomery, Alabama. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579458/original/file-20240304-22-4wvyvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579458/original/file-20240304-22-4wvyvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579458/original/file-20240304-22-4wvyvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579458/original/file-20240304-22-4wvyvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579458/original/file-20240304-22-4wvyvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579458/original/file-20240304-22-4wvyvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579458/original/file-20240304-22-4wvyvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579458/original/file-20240304-22-4wvyvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Es Devlin’s set design is memorable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Here he is joined by his two brothers, Mayer and Emanuel. They start dealing in raw commodities: cotton, tobacco, coffee. The brothers amass a fortune. The American Civil War starts and ends. They brothers talk finance and family at great length. The money keeps on rolling in. A lot of ground gets covered in the play’s first act, yet it never feels rushed. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the second and third acts.</p>
<h2>Too much is left unsaid</h2>
<p>Given its thematic focus and sheer duration, the play is, at times, strangely short on detail when it comes to its coverage of major economic events and financial catastrophes. </p>
<p>This becomes increasingly apparent as the piece progresses. </p>
<p>The second act focuses on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929">Wall Street Crash of 1929</a>. To be sure, there are moments of genuine dramatic intensity on display in this section of the play, as when the actors describe the human damage caused in the immediate wake of the crash. Yet the pain and hardship endured during the decade-long <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression">Great Depression</a> that came next is more or less brushed aside.</p>
<p>Something similar happens at the climax of the play, which wraps up without much of an exploration of the underlying <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis">reasons</a> behind the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis">Global Financial Crisis</a> of 2008. This elision struck me as especially jarring and unsatisfactory, given it resulted in Lehman Brothers going bankrupt.</p>
<p>While there is much to praise in The Lehman Trilogy, the impression I was left with one of a missed opportunity. Still, judging by the audience’s effusive reaction, it seems clear to me that – contrary to what Ezra Pound might think – people are willing to engage with and can in fact be moved by discussions of pressing economic matters. </p>
<p>Surely this can only be a good thing, as we continue to lurch from one financial crisis to the next. </p>
<p><em>The Lehman Trilogy is at the Theatre Royal Sydney until March 24.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/response-to-past-crises-shames-post-lehman-dithering-18205">Response to past crises shames post-Lehman dithering</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While there is much to praise in The Lehman Trilogy, now playing in Sydney, the impression I was left with was one of a missed opportunity.Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221532024-02-28T02:17:05Z2024-02-28T02:17:05ZThe Lewis Trilogy is ultimately about a love for theatre: the sharing of stories in a strange little room<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578439/original/file-20240227-25-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1917%2C1273&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over five engaging and enjoyable hours, the Lewis Trilogy, three works by Lewis Nowra, works insistently to convince its audience it is about love. Love that overcomes, that transcends, that is everything. And there certainly is a lot of love in the room.</p>
<p>Love for outsiders: battered and ruined families scraping sullen lives in the post-war badlands of a northern Melbourne housing commission estate; the dislocated, disjointed patients of a psychiatric institution muddling their way through rehearsals for Mozart’s <em>Cosi fan tutti</em>; flotsam and jetsam misfits carving out a place to belong in the front bar of a harbourside hotel. </p>
<p>Love for theatre: the sharing of stories in a strange little room, an irregular rhomboid set between the steep rakes of benched seating: 120 souls packed in tight, thankful for the companionship (and air conditioning), celebrating the work.</p>
<p>The love of a playwright for his characters. And the love of a man for a woman. Or for many women: “I was”, the narrator reflects at one point, “between divorces”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-theatre-production-in-the-pool-this-new-play-in-perth-leaves-the-audience-buoyed-220665">A theatre production ... in the pool? This new play in Perth leaves the audience buoyed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A dream to do something</h2>
<p>Louis Nowra is one of the most significant Australian playwrights of the past 40 years. His work stretches form and convention beyond realism towards a heightened theatrical lyricism, never losing sight of the textures and cadences of the world. </p>
<p>Under the direction of Declan Greene, each play in the trilogy has been trimmed to around 90 minutes. Summer of the Aliens (1992) is first: a coming-of-age drama, a guileless <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef"><em>theatre à clef</em></a> narrated by William Zappa’s warmly-rendered old Lewis, unfolding on the appropriately arid, unadorned boards of the stage, over which looms a flickering cinema hoarding touting a Cold War sci-fi alien invasion film. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578440/original/file-20240227-30-cd8v53.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image, a young couple sit on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578440/original/file-20240227-30-cd8v53.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578440/original/file-20240227-30-cd8v53.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578440/original/file-20240227-30-cd8v53.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578440/original/file-20240227-30-cd8v53.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578440/original/file-20240227-30-cd8v53.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578440/original/file-20240227-30-cd8v53.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578440/original/file-20240227-30-cd8v53.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lewis and Dulcie dream of something more: to sprout angel wings, to be kidnapped by aliens, to get away.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The action centres on the friendship of the young Lewis (Philip Lynch) with the precociously worldly — and, as we discover, sexually-abused – Dulcie (Masego Pitso), starting with play wrestling and culminating in a booze-fuelled break-in at the local RSL club. Both dream of something more: to sprout angel wings, to be kidnapped by aliens, to get away. </p>
<p>To do something, to be somewhere other than there.</p>
<p>The second play, Cosi (1992), is the most conventionally accomplished of the three. Young Lewis is now an arts graduate and sometime political activist, taking on his first job: directing an opera in an asylum. </p>
<p>Nowra’s writing here is at its most assured. Even in the relatively shortened form, the dramaturgy is assured, the dramatic arc solid. The chaotic menagerie of recovering junkies, pyromaniacs, narcissists and all but catatonics resolves into a sublime, show-stopping set-piece performance of operatic highlights. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578441/original/file-20240227-27-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cast dressed for Cosi fan tutti take a bow." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578441/original/file-20240227-27-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578441/original/file-20240227-27-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578441/original/file-20240227-27-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578441/original/file-20240227-27-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578441/original/file-20240227-27-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578441/original/file-20240227-27-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578441/original/file-20240227-27-7es5wb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cosi is Nowra’s writing at its most assured.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, the most explicitly reflexive and formally adventurous of the plays, 2017’s This Much is True. </p>
<p>A more-than-affectionate love letter, a late-in-life coming of age story, as the old Lewis (Zappa again) finds his people: a picaresque assemblage of character sketches (the pub itself one of them) and story shards woven into a narrative of loss, yearning, betrayal and redemption. </p>
<p>Old Lewis, now a full-blown character in the world he narrates, explains: when people know that you are a writer, they bring their stories to you. It’s almost an apology for the frenetic, episodic magic realism that has unfolded. This perhaps unreliable narrator assures us, though, that the stories were the ones he had heard about and experienced: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some of you may think they’re exaggerated, but we locals think otherwise.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578444/original/file-20240227-16-qnlv7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A older man stands on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578444/original/file-20240227-16-qnlv7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578444/original/file-20240227-16-qnlv7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578444/original/file-20240227-16-qnlv7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578444/original/file-20240227-16-qnlv7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578444/original/file-20240227-16-qnlv7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578444/original/file-20240227-16-qnlv7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578444/original/file-20240227-16-qnlv7d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This Much is True is a late-in-life coming of age story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A span of life</h2>
<p>As relentless as the insistence on love is the insistence of time. The five hours are bracketed by repeated tones, a metabolic rhythm as implacable as a metronome, the tympanic beating of an angiogram. A coiling: love and time; time and love. Themes of death, loss and regret press and surge, pushing back, hard, against the simplicity of the promise of love.</p>
<p>The plays chart a span of life; spending a day in the theatre with the plays redoubles the palpability of time itself. We – the audience – dwell in the power of theatre to immerse us in place and time. Between plays we sit on the kerb outside, have a coffee at a local café, a bowl of pasta or salad, return and smile at our fellow audience members. We move around the theatre, choosing different seats for each play.</p>
<p>We follow the actors as they move through different roles, catching echoes and tensions across the casting: Paul Capsis tears it up as a series of wild-eyed clowns; Thomas Campbell finds pathos and subtle variations through a motley collection of blokes (and others). </p>
<p>Ursula Yovich is utterly compelling, first as young Lewis’ grandmother, then as an adoring psychiatric patient, and finally as a standover man. Her presence on stage gently but unmistakably alerts us to the absence of First Nations people in a play cycle so concerned with place, community and belonging. </p>
<p>Lynch is extraordinary as the young Lewis in the first two plays: a glorious portrait of a young man finding his feet.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578447/original/file-20240227-22-ctolqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: the actor on a ladder." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578447/original/file-20240227-22-ctolqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578447/original/file-20240227-22-ctolqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578447/original/file-20240227-22-ctolqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578447/original/file-20240227-22-ctolqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578447/original/file-20240227-22-ctolqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578447/original/file-20240227-22-ctolqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578447/original/file-20240227-22-ctolqt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pitso has the toughest gig. The burden of Lewis’ yearning, regret, and, yes, love, falls on her characters’ shoulders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pitso, though, has the toughest gig: first as young Dulcie, then as a recovering junkie, and finally as a philosophy student working as a barmaid in the Rising Sun Hotel. The burden of Lewis’ yearning, regret and, yes, love, falls on these characters’ shoulders. </p>
<p>In a rewriting of the final scene, Nowra has crafted a more emphatic narrative arc, binding the trilogy all the more tightly together: Dulcie, old Lewis explains, was something like the one true love. It was always Dulcie for whom he was looking, who he needed to save. </p>
<p>A neat piece of dramaturgy, but, for me, something of a deflation after an otherwise deeply, resonatingly rich immersion.</p>
<p><em>The Lewis Trilogy is a Griffin Theatre Company until 21 April.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-fool-in-love-is-delightfully-ridiculous-and-sharp-witted-social-satire-at-its-finest-221320">A Fool in Love is delightfully ridiculous and sharp-witted: social satire at its finest</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222153/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Maxwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Louis Nowra is one of the most significant Australian playwrights of the past 40 years. Griffith Theatre Company is staging a trilogy of his work.Ian Maxwell, Associate Professor in Performance Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206652024-02-13T00:15:02Z2024-02-13T00:15:02ZA theatre production … in the pool? This new play in Perth leaves the audience buoyed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574899/original/file-20240212-18-6k7w86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C0%2C3004%2C2013&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>My obsession for public pools began when I was growing up in Perth at the iconic 1960s Beatty Park. Living in Melbourne I swam in the “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-breakfast/fitzroy-pool/11523190">aqua profonda</a>” of the Fitzroy pool, listened to the underwater music (which in the 1980s was novel) at the Prahran pool and lapped at the pool that attracts attention for being named after a drowned prime minister — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt_Memorial_Swimming_Centre">the Harold Holt</a>. So, I was looking forward to Black Swan State Theatre Company’s new production The Pool, and it doesn’t disappoint.</p>
<p>Playwright Steve Rodgers’ love of swimming is the play’s genesis. A regular lap swimmer, Rodgers was struck by the diversity of people who gathered at pools and started to imagine their stories. What followed were interviews with workers at community pools and in aged care, teenagers, family and friends, and a play that celebrates the pool and its capacity to create community. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-timeless-appeal-of-an-ocean-pool-turns-out-its-a-good-investment-too-127912">The timeless appeal of an ocean pool – turns out it's a good investment, too</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Watching on from poolside</h2>
<p>Directed by Kate Champion, the production of this play has been cleverly conceived as a site-specific work at the Bold Park Aquatic Centre’s outdoor Olympic pool. Given Perth’s current heatwave, this venue is welcomed. But beyond this, it enables us to experience the pool’s atmosphere – the smell of chlorine, sound of water lapping at the sides – and to be part of the action. </p>
<p>Seated poolside, we observe the goings on in and around the pool just as Rodgers did. But we don’t have to imagine the stories. Equipped with headphones, we eavesdrop on conversations and are privy to the characters’ inner thoughts in carefully woven monologues, as these characters reminisce, reveal long held secrets and whisper their fears.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574900/original/file-20240212-30-yxtap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Actors in a pool" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574900/original/file-20240212-30-yxtap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574900/original/file-20240212-30-yxtap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574900/original/file-20240212-30-yxtap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574900/original/file-20240212-30-yxtap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574900/original/file-20240212-30-yxtap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574900/original/file-20240212-30-yxtap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574900/original/file-20240212-30-yxtap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Given Perth’s current heatwave, this poolside venue is welcomed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Pool’s characters represent the diversity of people who gather at pools and the myriad of reasons they go. </p>
<p>Loved-up teens Safiyah (Edyll Ismail) and Ananda (Tobias Muhafidin) are escaping the censuring gaze of adults. The over-60s trio of Roy (Geoff Kelso), wife Greta (Polly Low) and her buddy Val (Julia Moody) are healing their ageing bodies and family rifts. </p>
<p>Roy and Greta’s 40-year-old daughter Joni (Emma Jackson) is facing her fears. Quinn (Anna Gray) is looking for recognition. Morgan (Carys Munks) is seeking freedom. </p>
<p>Keeping these regulars afloat are poolside staff Kirk (Joel Jackson) and Sandra (Kylie Bracknell) with their own reasons for being there. The actors, from equally diverse backgrounds and with a range of acting experience, create a convincing ensemble. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574901/original/file-20240212-17-kdfbw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Actors on the edge of a pool" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574901/original/file-20240212-17-kdfbw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574901/original/file-20240212-17-kdfbw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574901/original/file-20240212-17-kdfbw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574901/original/file-20240212-17-kdfbw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574901/original/file-20240212-17-kdfbw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574901/original/file-20240212-17-kdfbw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574901/original/file-20240212-17-kdfbw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The actors are from diverse backgrounds and with a range of acting experience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Passion for the pool</h2>
<p>Conviction and authenticity are at the heart of this production. Rodgers’ passion for water and the pool washes through his play. The dialogue is carefully crafted to sound natural and not overwritten, allowing the audience to piece the stories together as we would in life. It also allows space for Champion’s expert direction. </p>
<p>In the program, Champion writes she has “always been drawn to art that recreates a sense of authenticity”. She has achieved this in The Pool with details that blur the distinction between reality and theatre. </p>
<p>As we are ushered into the space, swimmers are in the pool, prompting somebody near me to speculate on whether they were actors or actual lap swimmers. As a finale, members of the audience can choose to join the cast in an aqua aerobic session. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574906/original/file-20240212-26-go150s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A line of swimmers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574906/original/file-20240212-26-go150s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574906/original/file-20240212-26-go150s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574906/original/file-20240212-26-go150s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574906/original/file-20240212-26-go150s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574906/original/file-20240212-26-go150s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574906/original/file-20240212-26-go150s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574906/original/file-20240212-26-go150s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Pool is greatly enhanced in its subtle shifts away from realism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The actors’ movement in and around the pool and their entrances and exits are carefully choreographed not only to retain focus on the main action but to replicate the rhythms and patterns of people at public pools.</p>
<p>The Pool is greatly enhanced in its subtle shifts away from realism. Champion picks up on the aesthetics of the public pool, focusing on the sensuality of its water and beauty of its objects: handrails, ramp, deckchairs and lane ropes. Actors’ interactions with these features have been shaped to highlight the grace in our everyday movements. </p>
<p>Key to this poetic strain is a chorus of swimmers who appear throughout. They are sublime, morphing from being regulars lounging, lapping, diving and performing impressive bommies to performing carefully choreographed water sequences that frame and comment on scenes. </p>
<p>Their inclusion greatly contributes to the poignancy of the play. </p>
<h2>A place of connection</h2>
<p>Crucial to all this is the audio. The use of headphones for the audience creates an intimacy with the characters. Composer and sound designer Tim Collins’ finely nuanced score supports the action without dominating, and without any hitches. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574902/original/file-20240212-26-3p863l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An aqua aerobic session." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574902/original/file-20240212-26-3p863l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574902/original/file-20240212-26-3p863l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574902/original/file-20240212-26-3p863l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574902/original/file-20240212-26-3p863l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574902/original/file-20240212-26-3p863l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574902/original/file-20240212-26-3p863l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574902/original/file-20240212-26-3p863l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As a finale, members of the audience could choose to join in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.royallifesaving.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/56605/RLSSA-Social-Impacts-Report-Final-November-2021-Web-and-Print.pdf">more than 2,000</a> swimming pools open to the public in Australia. They have been sites of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/21/freedom-ride-revisiting-the-dip-in-the-pool-that-changed-a-segregated-town">protest and social change</a>. This production shows they are also a space where we can have a laugh, shed our skins and find or lose ourselves – and ultimately find connection with others. </p>
<p>At a time when we sorely need it, The Pool speaks to our humanity. The opening night audience left buoyed. </p>
<p><em>Black Swan State Theatre Company’s The Pool is on until 25 February.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/take-a-plunge-into-the-memories-of-australias-favourite-swimming-pools-128928">Take a plunge into the memories of Australia's favourite swimming pools</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Trenos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Black Swan State Theatre Company’s new production The Pool, playwright Steve Rodgers’ love of swimming is the play’s genesisHelen Trenos, Lecturer (Theatre & Creative Arts), Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213202024-02-12T02:38:29Z2024-02-12T02:38:29ZA Fool in Love is delightfully ridiculous and sharp-witted: social satire at its finest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574799/original/file-20240211-27-xvsffo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C4%2C3213%2C2152&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Van Badham’s A Fool in Love at the Sydney Theatre Company lampoons the modern Sydney vibe: a city obsessed with wealth, status and, of course, love.</p>
<p>Designer Isabel Hudson’s candy-coloured set, lolly-pop-esque orange trees and sherbet-coloured tinsel attire seem to vibrate the essence of the city as we move juggernaut-like towards the festivities of Valentine’s day and Mardi Gras. </p>
<p>Based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lope_de_Vega">Lope de Vega</a>’s 17th-century production La Dama Boba, Badham transports us to a camp version of the original nestled in a bourgeois beachside enclave – the embodiment of Sydney’s eastern suburbs. We find ourselves in a world obsessed with private schools, linen attire, and the maintenance (if not stock-piling) of funds.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shakespeare-and-cervantes-what-similarities-between-the-famous-writers-reveal-about-mysteries-of-authorship-152669">Shakespeare and Cervantes: what similarities between the famous writers reveal about mysteries of authorship</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What’s love got to do with it?</h2>
<p>Ottavio (Johnny Nasser) is yet another linen-clad specimen, the heir to a once-thriving empire in the automotive parts manufacturing realm, now plummeting into irreparable decline. </p>
<p>To sustain his lavish lifestyle and secure the dwindling family fortune, he faces the daunting task of orchestrating the marriage of his eldest daughter, Phynayah (Contessa Treffone). </p>
<p>To inherit her eccentric uncle’s remarkable fortune – and maintain her family’s coveted social standing – Phynayah must marry before she’s 30. A difficult task in a city like Sydney, where romantics are snuffed out by dating apps and the idea there are always greener pastures one swipe away. </p>
<p>However, such a romantic deal (the promise of wealth and cultural standing), attracts more than one ambitious suitor. Phynayah’s clever and social climbing sister Vanessa (Melissa Kahraman) also “brings the boys to the yard” for herself.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574803/original/file-20240211-30-vx6pw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in blue pants and a pink jacket" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574803/original/file-20240211-30-vx6pw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574803/original/file-20240211-30-vx6pw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574803/original/file-20240211-30-vx6pw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574803/original/file-20240211-30-vx6pw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574803/original/file-20240211-30-vx6pw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574803/original/file-20240211-30-vx6pw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574803/original/file-20240211-30-vx6pw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ottavio faces the daunting task of orchestrating the marriage of his eldest daughter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The tale of making love to Phynayah is not as straightforward as it seems. Beautiful, and soon to be in possession of great wealth, Phynayah could be perceived as a modern catch: but these days suitors want more. They expect brains as well – not to mention a sizeable Instagram and TikTok account.</p>
<p>Clueless, witless, and perpetually silly, Treffone’s Phynayah embodies immaturity itself, donning a crochet bikini and serving as a living banal joke. The question looms: is any social climber desperate enough to align themselves with a poolside belle whose intellectual prowess is overshadowed by her towel?</p>
<h2>Frothy tales</h2>
<p>In this electric and funny rendition directed by Kenneth Moraleda, Badham invites us to comment on the economics of love. While Jennifer Lopez told us “love don’t cost a thing,” economic data would argue otherwise.</p>
<p>The aspirational suitors, the “new money”, are from Western Sydney and other “undesirable” burbs. In seeking to seduce Phynayah (or Vanessa), they are swallowed in frothy, silly, hapless tales.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574800/original/file-20240211-16-ygvx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three men" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574800/original/file-20240211-16-ygvx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574800/original/file-20240211-16-ygvx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574800/original/file-20240211-16-ygvx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574800/original/file-20240211-16-ygvx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574800/original/file-20240211-16-ygvx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574800/original/file-20240211-16-ygvx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574800/original/file-20240211-16-ygvx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The aspirational suitors are swallowed in frothy, silly, hapless tales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The unholy union of love and the consumer marketplace is not by any means a new one. As Jane Austen told us in Pride and Prejudice, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” – and vice versa. </p>
<p>If we were to extend back historically, this kind of mating based on wealth, social or cultural is old news. Women and men were often traded and dowries were applied. The notion that you can pick your own partner based on love is a uniquely modern one, and it can be unpicked quickly. </p>
<p>Badham is not only inviting us to reflect on the economics of love but also gender and cultural politics. Women’s visual, intellectual and social value is paraded, catwalk style, to please men (suitors, fathers, and onlookers alike). </p>
<p>To use Austen again, Mr Darcy sets the benchmark high when he defines his idea of an accomplished woman: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This kind of identity management is nothing new and is exacerbated by social media. It is distinctly pervasive for women who are generally represented as having (or being) too little or too much. Too fat or too thin; too clever or too stupid; too free or too restricted. Phynayah and Vanessa embody this tension.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574802/original/file-20240211-26-lfzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women on stage, surrounded by pink" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574802/original/file-20240211-26-lfzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574802/original/file-20240211-26-lfzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574802/original/file-20240211-26-lfzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574802/original/file-20240211-26-lfzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574802/original/file-20240211-26-lfzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574802/original/file-20240211-26-lfzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574802/original/file-20240211-26-lfzqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women are perceived as too fat or too thin; too clever or too stupid; too free or too restricted.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alongside this, the discussion on the aspirational suitors and their geographical genesis demonstrates (disturbingly) that the “<a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/social-affairs/imaginary-line-exposing-real-sydney-divide">latte line</a>” (or should I say “linen line?”) dividing Sydney’s western and eastern suburbs is congealing. </p>
<p>A Fool in Love challenges us to consider this widening divide and growing social inequity through the lens of the tomfoolery of love. The haves and have nots of linen wardrobes – and also of privilege.</p>
<p>A Fool in Love is as bold as it is delightfully ridiculous and sharp-witted. Social satire at its finest.</p>
<p><em>A Fool in Love is at the Sydney Theatre Company until 17 March.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/another-tale-of-two-cities-access-to-jobs-divides-sydney-along-the-latte-line-96907">Another tale of two cities: access to jobs divides Sydney along the 'latte line'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Portolan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Van Badham’s A Fool in Love at the Sydney Theatre Company lampoons the modern Sydney vibe: a city obsessed with wealth, status and, of course, love.Lisa Portolan, PhD student, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2199652023-12-19T05:33:33Z2023-12-19T05:33:33ZLeah Purcell’s Is That You, Ruthie? is a powerful look at ‘dormitory girls’ separated from Country and family<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566180/original/file-20231218-23-vsbogh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3578%2C2398&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Wallis</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article contains mentions of the Stolen Generations, and policies using outdated and potentially offensive terminology when referring to First Nations people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Aunty Ruth Hegarty, or Ruthie, was four-and-a-half years old when she was forcibly removed from her mother, Ruby, under the auspices of Queensland’s Aboriginals Protection Act (1897).</p>
<p>The Act, as it was known, dispossessed thousands of Indigenous Australians of their heartlines and their homes by segregating them to government reserves that have been compared by past residents to <a href="https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/46071/31/05chapter4.pdf">concentration camps</a>.</p>
<p>Is That You, Ruthie?, written and directed by Leah Purcell, one of Australia’s most important theatremakers, is an adaptation of <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/is-that-you-ruthie">Aunty Ruth’s memoir</a>. It is a harrowing account of a mother and daughter’s attempt to repair their fractured relationship after being separated from their culture, their Country, and each other.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-australia-is-deadly-and-leah-purcell-shows-it-28768">Indigenous Australia is deadly – and Leah Purcell shows it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Giving stage to the dormo girls</h2>
<p>Purcell’s bold new play remembers the Stolen Generations of Indigenous women and children who were interned for more than 70 years at Barambah station, later known as <a href="https://www.qld.gov.au/firstnations/cultural-awareness-heritage-arts/community-histories/community-histories-c-d/community-histories-cherbourg">Cherbourg</a>, 250 kilometres northwest of Brisbane. </p>
<p>The story of the self-called dormitory girls, or “dormo girls”, is the story of the irreparable damage caused by the sanctioned removal and control of First Nations families and the dormitory system’s cruel legacy of the separation of children from their mothers.</p>
<p>The play opens in 1930, in the grip of the Great Depression, when a young Ruby (Chenoa Deemal) arrives with her six-month-old daughter Ruthie at the Barambah mission – “just for a little while” – on the advice of the local police sergeant, who is also the ironically titled “Protector of Aboriginals”.</p>
<p>When she is four-and-a-half, Ruthie (Melodie Reynolds-Diarra) is separated from Ruby, and they spend the next 30 years trapped in parallel lives. </p>
<p>Following their separation, mother and daughter are housed in separate dorms. They can see each other, but are forbidden to touch or talk.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566445/original/file-20231218-29-95okkx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman dressed as a maid, near a white metal bed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566445/original/file-20231218-29-95okkx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566445/original/file-20231218-29-95okkx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566445/original/file-20231218-29-95okkx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566445/original/file-20231218-29-95okkx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566445/original/file-20231218-29-95okkx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566445/original/file-20231218-29-95okkx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566445/original/file-20231218-29-95okkx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mother and daughter are interned in dormitories on their arrival at Cherbourg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo credit: Peter Wallis</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a narrative spiral that moves back and forward in time, the pair oscillate in and out of each other’s lives as their relationship becomes increasingly estranged. </p>
<p>Separately, they are trained and later hired as domestic servants to aid the expanding white settlement.</p>
<p>After years of exploitation as “domestics”, both are denied access to their wages in a form of multi-generational financial abuse that is now recognised as the <a href="https://www.grantthornton.com.au/services/case-study/stolen-wages-class-action/">Stolen Wages</a>.</p>
<p>When mother and daughter finally reunite, they are forced to face the painful realisation that they are strangers. Their relationship, irreversibly severed, is never the same.</p>
<p>In the play’s final scene the actors step forward out of character to remind us this story is not a work of fiction – a necessary and important moment when Australia’s history is still often met with <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263601584_Engaging_non-indigenous_students_in_indigenous_history_and_un-history_An_approach_for_non-indigenous_teachers_and_a_politics_for_the_twenty-first_century">defensive denial and resistance</a>.</p>
<h2>Two hearts breaking</h2>
<p>Purcell, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/awaye/is-that-you-ruthie/103087474">a self-described “truth-teller”</a>, has perfected <a href="https://socialalternatives.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/PROWSE-ET_AL-SA_41_3.pdf">the art of adaptation</a>. She is perhaps best known for her interpretation of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-drovers-wife-the-legend-of-molly-johnson-brings-a-black-womans-perspective-to-australian-frontier-films-170782">The Drover’s Wife</a>, which she has adapted three times to the page, stage and screen.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-drovers-wife-the-legend-of-molly-johnson-brings-a-black-womans-perspective-to-australian-frontier-films-170782">The Drover’s Wife: the Legend of Molly Johnson brings a Black woman's perspective to Australian frontier films</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In Ruthie, over the course of 90 minutes, she strips down Hegarty’s memoir to its powerful core: the story of two hearts breaking. But Purcell’s play, like its origin material, is also a story about the enduring and ineffable connections that bond women who share profound trauma and grief.</p>
<p>Building on the tradition of Ningali Lawford-Wolf’s Ningali (1994), Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman’s The Seven Stages of Grieving (1996), and Jane Harrison’s Stolen (1998), Purcell interjects genuine moments of humour in a work that highlights the fraught nature of forgiveness and the cultural significance of both resistance and resilience.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566464/original/file-20231219-27-9sj5gt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a woman stands on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566464/original/file-20231219-27-9sj5gt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566464/original/file-20231219-27-9sj5gt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566464/original/file-20231219-27-9sj5gt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566464/original/file-20231219-27-9sj5gt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566464/original/file-20231219-27-9sj5gt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566464/original/file-20231219-27-9sj5gt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566464/original/file-20231219-27-9sj5gt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Purcell strips down Hegarty’s memoir to its powerful core.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo credit: Peter Wallis</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work interweaves traditional song and dance in a testament to the courage and resilience of the young girls who lost their mothers and in turn became sisters who, in their own words, simply looked after each other.</p>
<p>As Aunty Ruth reflects in her memoir:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our lives were governed by the same policies, and what happened to one, happened to all of us. We were treated identically, dressed identically, our hair cut identically. We were dormitory girls.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Purcell and Hegarty share the same creative agenda: both women blend the personal with the political through autobiographical storytelling and the power of witnessing. </p>
<h2>A collaborative creation</h2>
<p>Importantly, in her newest work, Purcell preserves the protocols of Indigenous storytelling by using collaborative theatre to combine oral history with documentary techniques. Aunty Ruth, now 94, collaborated on the script and contributed to the creative process. </p>
<p>The projection of archival material from Aunty Ruth’s government file – visitation requests, travel permits, letters from the Superintendent – bridge the theatrical and historical worlds of the play, and unite the emotion of the dramatic retelling with the authority and authenticity of the archive.</p>
<p>At a post show discussion with Aunty Ruth, Purcell invoked the audience’s obligation to bear witness. “You cannot deny this woman her story,” she said, “because she’s sitting right here.”</p>
<p>In this way, the play’s title, Is That You, Ruthie?, is an important recognition of the past as much as it is a haunting inquisition that demands we listen.</p>
<p><em>Is That You, Ruthie? by Oombarra Productions played at QPAC, Brisbane. Season closed.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Cantrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is That You, Ruthie? is a harrowing account of a mother and daughter’s attempt to repair their fractured relationship.Kate Cantrell, Senior Lecturer — Writing, Editing, Publishing, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191102023-12-04T03:55:49Z2023-12-04T03:55:49ZAt the End of the Land: an avalanche of images that invites us to sit alone in time and space together<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563198/original/file-20231204-21-ly2bjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C4%2C2978%2C1991&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aaron Claringbold/PICA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the End of the Land, a world premiere production by Western Australian interdisciplinary theatre makers Too Close to the Sun, is an experiential encounter with the liminal space between life and death and other unknowable things.</p>
<p>Performed, written and co-devised by Talya Rubin with co-devisor and director Nick James, At the End of the Land integrates Rubin’s live, amplified voice, delivered via direct address, with Samuel James’ luscious, seemingly three-dimensional video. </p>
<p>Working in concert with the soundscape (composed by Rachael Dease with sound design by Daniel Herten and Hayley Forward), the performance is a parade of images – aural, live and projected – that hold for a moment to imprint on our retinas, but then are gone as quickly as they appeared. </p>
<p>Rubin’s spoken text, sometimes heightened and poetic, other times direct and specific, has multiple narratives. The most recurring throughline references a story of the deaths of 18 young women in a Victorian-era boarding house. Speaking as one of these vanished women about “the day we all died” and what it’s like to be dead, Rubin guides the audience into this in-between place. There is a slightly disembodied quality to her presence, anchored by the serious sincerity of her deliberate delivery.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-hardest-and-most-beautiful-conversation-ive-ever-had-how-end-of-life-storytelling-on-tiktok-helps-us-process-death-206999">'The hardest and most beautiful conversation I've ever had': how end-of-life storytelling on TikTok helps us process death</a>
</strong>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>Dreamscapes</h2>
<p>The stage is variously zoned, with miniature rooms and landscapes enlarged via projection that plays with perspective, as the performer manipulates the tiny scenes. </p>
<p>One of the zones features a red velvet armchair, with a small side table and lamp, on a black and white checked floor, reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. This space places Rubin in her Peter Pan-collared outfit as a sort of Alice in the underworld.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563201/original/file-20231204-17-nm67f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A scary red monkey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563201/original/file-20231204-17-nm67f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563201/original/file-20231204-17-nm67f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563201/original/file-20231204-17-nm67f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563201/original/file-20231204-17-nm67f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563201/original/file-20231204-17-nm67f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563201/original/file-20231204-17-nm67f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563201/original/file-20231204-17-nm67f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Red Monkey is a sort of demonic oracle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aaron Claringbold/PICA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sometimes accompanied by the recurring figure of the Red Monkey, the narrator’s sidekick who acts as a sort of demonic oracle, the overall effect is of a surreal, painterly dreamscape. </p>
<p>At one point Rubin narrates a verbatim interview with American filmmaker and painter David Lynch talking about his ideas and process, particularly with regards to his first feature Eraserhead. It works to position the performance in the highly visual “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/620859">dreamlike logic</a>” of a Lynchian landscape.</p>
<h2>Our own memories</h2>
<p>At The End of The Land creates a very specific, sustained introspective mood, twice deliberately broken by Rubin when the house lights are raised and the audience directly engaged. </p>
<p>There is a relief in this direct connection, momentarily unfiltered by technology. Rubin invites us to embrace the living and the dead, to contemplate and embrace the inevitability of our own death and the invisible threads that guide (and sometimes abandon) us all. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563200/original/file-20231204-22-lmlt5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman talks into a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563200/original/file-20231204-22-lmlt5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563200/original/file-20231204-22-lmlt5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563200/original/file-20231204-22-lmlt5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563200/original/file-20231204-22-lmlt5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563200/original/file-20231204-22-lmlt5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563200/original/file-20231204-22-lmlt5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563200/original/file-20231204-22-lmlt5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rubin becomes an Alice in the underground.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aaron Claringbold/PICA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These moments of suspension create space and self-reflection leaving us alone with our own memories. </p>
<p>Operating in a non-linear surreality, Rubin’s text gives us hooks and signposts, but ultimately the density of images create a sensory overload that washes over you. It works to open the viewer up to the varied associations that accord with their own experience, ensuring At the End of the Land will land differently for each person. </p>
<p>For my companion, the references to the 18 dead women, provoked an association with <a href="https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-communities/16-days-wa">16 Days in WA</a>, a family and domestic violence campaign currently running in the state. Amid the myriad associative possibilities, Rubin’s endeavour is personal but also invitational as she finds ways to bring us together.</p>
<p>It is a seamless performance, which is pretty remarkable considering the work is really all seam: an avalanche of images knitted together with visible seams that invite the audience to sit alone in time and space together.</p>
<p><em>At the End of the Land played at PICA, Perth. Season closed.</em></p>
<hr>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/49-women-have-been-killed-in-australia-so-far-in-2023-as-a-result-of-violence-are-we-actually-making-any-progress-217552">49 women have been killed in Australia so far in 2023 as a result of violence. Are we actually making any progress?</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219110/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leah Mercer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This production by Western Australian interdisciplinary theatre makers Too Close to the Sun is an experiential encounter with the liminal space between life and death.Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2157992023-11-27T23:34:18Z2023-11-27T23:34:18ZChekhov called The Seagull ‘a comedy’. The Sydney Theatre Company seems to forget it was a tragedy, too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561983/original/file-20231127-19-vsue0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1917%2C1273&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What is comedy?</p>
<p>This is the question I kept coming back to while watching Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, which opened to warm applause – and a touch of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/theatre/actors-perplexed-after-sydney-theatre-company-apologises-for-protest-20231127-p5en3a.html">controversy</a> – at the Sydney Theatre Company on Saturday. </p>
<p>Theatre scholar <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-introduction-to-comedy/BF3A25BC83C8F5C067E4849EE33BCFEA">Eric Weitz</a> notes that comedy is a genre “with characteristic features”. </p>
<p>Laughter, humour, distraction. These are some of the terms associated with comedy.</p>
<p>Comedy is also restless. As Weitz acknowledges, comedy “embraces a range of subgenres” and often “cross-pollinates with other genres to form the likes of tragicomedy”.</p>
<p>These cross-pollinations can often confuse. </p>
<p>Consider the very first performance of The Seagull, subtitled “a comedy in four acts”.</p>
<p>The notorious performance at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg on October 17 1896 was an unmitigated failure. The audience jeered; the reviews were scathing. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561985/original/file-20231127-27-lm6ylo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photograph" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561985/original/file-20231127-27-lm6ylo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561985/original/file-20231127-27-lm6ylo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561985/original/file-20231127-27-lm6ylo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561985/original/file-20231127-27-lm6ylo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561985/original/file-20231127-27-lm6ylo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561985/original/file-20231127-27-lm6ylo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561985/original/file-20231127-27-lm6ylo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chekhov reads The Seagull with the Moscow Art Theatre company, 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anton_Chekhov_reads_The_Seagull.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a letter sent to the publisher Aleksey Suvorin the very next day, a wounded <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6408/6408-h/6408-h.htm">Chekhov declared</a> he would never again “write plays or have them acted”.</p>
<p>The reason why the premiere went so badly has to do with audience expectations. As essayist <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Janet-Malcolm-Reading-Chekhov-9781847085368">Janet Malcolm</a> explains, there were special circumstances on the night in question. </p>
<p>The performance was part of a benefit event for E. I. Levkeeva, a popular Russian comic actress, “and so the audience was largely made up of Levkeeva fans, who expected hilarity and, to their disbelief and growing outrage, got <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_(arts)#Theatre">Symbolism</a>.”</p>
<p>Primed for broad comedy, the audience didn’t know what to do with Chehkov’s groundbreaking spin on the genre, which broke with established realist modes and placed emphasis on metaphorical imagery and allegorical tropes.</p>
<p>While the play, which speaks to the themes of art and desire, has many funny moments, it simultaneously foregrounds discussions of mortality and depictions of madness. And it ends with a suicide.</p>
<p>Moreover, Chekhov’s play is one where, as the academic <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-introduction-to-chekhov/FF993E471DCA286DFDE4C67503C8DBF5">James Loehlin writes</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>the old win out over the young, where hope and the impulse for change are crushed, in part through their own fragility and lack of conviction, but in part by the proficient ruthlessness of the seasoned old campaigners, their elders.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I mention this because the serious and subtle aspects of The Seagull – many of which continue to resonate today – can get lost in modern takes on Chekhov’s play.</p>
<p>This is true of the Sydney Theatre Company’s production. Adapted by Upton and directed by Imara Savage, this version showcases the sound work of Max Lyandvert and features a meta-theatrical set designed by David Fleischer.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561986/original/file-20231127-15-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man sits on a deck." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561986/original/file-20231127-15-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561986/original/file-20231127-15-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561986/original/file-20231127-15-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561986/original/file-20231127-15-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561986/original/file-20231127-15-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561986/original/file-20231127-15-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561986/original/file-20231127-15-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This version is set in contemporary rural Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The adaptation is set in contemporary rural Australia and uses anglicised character names. Upton and Savage stick with Chekhov’s formal structure, but privilege the comedic at the expense of pretty much everything else when it comes to delivery. </p>
<p>This has ramifications for how the adaptation pans out.</p>
<hr>
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</strong>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>Success beckons, tragedy befalls</h2>
<p>The play comprises four acts and centres on four characters who mirror each other. </p>
<p>Constantine (Harry Greenwood) and Boris (Toby Schmitz) are writers. Boris is famous. Constantine – a college dropout who fancies his chances as an avant-gardist – is most definitely not. </p>
<p>Irina (Sigrid Thornton) and Nina (Mabel Li) are actors. Irina, who is Constantine’s mother and Boris’s lover, is a renowned stage star. The ingénue Nina, who is dating Constantine, desperately wants to make it.</p>
<p>Success beckons, but tragedy eventually befalls Nina – who leaves Constantine for Boris – in the two year gap between the play’s third and fourth acts.</p>
<p>These characters are joined by several others, including Irina’s ailing landowner brother Peter (Sean O'Shea), and a depressive young goth, Masha (Megan Wilding). With the exception of one, every character in the play is morose. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561987/original/file-20231127-28-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cast line up across the stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561987/original/file-20231127-28-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561987/original/file-20231127-28-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561987/original/file-20231127-28-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561987/original/file-20231127-28-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561987/original/file-20231127-28-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561987/original/file-20231127-28-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561987/original/file-20231127-28-mjzft2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">With the exception of one, every character in the play is morose.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first act is structured around an abortive performance of an experimental theatre piece Constantine has worked up. Nina and Boris grow close in the second, while Irina holds court. At the start of the third act, it is revealed Constantine has tried to take his own life. Boris threatens to leave Irina for Nina. Hilarity ensues as Irina tries to win him back. </p>
<p>The atmosphere that the Sydney Theatre Company creative team establishes in each of these acts is lighthearted and largely humorous. Indeed, there are some moments, as when a gravely ill Peter convulses on the ground in the third act, when the onstage action almost tips over into outright farce.</p>
<p>As Chekhov himself insisted, different types of comedy – including farce – had roles to play in The Seagull. However, the overarching tonal emphasis in this adaptation causes problems in the play’s last act, which is set indoors during the Australian winter. </p>
<p>Peter, not long for the world, spends his time talking about how he regrets his entire life. The other characters fob him off. Constantine has made headway as a writer, but is deeply unhappy. He pines after Nina, who dropped off the radar somewhere between acts. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561984/original/file-20231127-19-dzlc6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman looks at a man holding a seagull." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561984/original/file-20231127-19-dzlc6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561984/original/file-20231127-19-dzlc6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561984/original/file-20231127-19-dzlc6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561984/original/file-20231127-19-dzlc6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561984/original/file-20231127-19-dzlc6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561984/original/file-20231127-19-dzlc6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561984/original/file-20231127-19-dzlc6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mabel Li gives one of the standout performances.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Time passes, and trivialities exchanged. A bedraggled Nina reappears. The story she tells is one of sorrow and woe. A genuinely moving moment, the speech is delivered with real affective intensity – undoubtedly the high point of the production.</p>
<p>However, the tonal chasm between the final act and the preceding three is simply too great. </p>
<p>In keeping with Chehkov’s original, comedy ultimately gives way to tragedy, but something seems to have been lost along the way.</p>
<p><em>The Seagull is at the Sydney Theatre Company until December 16.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
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<p><em>If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The serious and subtle aspects of The Seagull – many of which continue to resonate today – are lost in this new production.Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2172742023-11-24T04:24:35Z2023-11-24T04:24:35ZThe exquisite physical comedy of Dirty Birds: a new Aussie post-COVID Theatre of the Absurd<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561500/original/file-20231124-25-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C5%2C3964%2C2646&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Theatre is littered with sister double acts: Antigone and Ismene, Kate and Bianca, Blanche and Stella, Fleabag and Claire. The shared history of sisters delivers inbuilt emotional stakes and lots of baggage. The doubling of experience brings both love and rivalry, the joys of being known and the horrors of being trapped by the reflection of the other. Looking like not-quite twins, real-life sisters Hayley and Mandy McElhinney are the dirty birds of the title, in the world premiere of a co-written work in which they play reclusive sisters.</p>
<p>With a broad resume of work on stage and screen, Dirty Birds is their debut play and the first time the McElhinney sisters have shared the stage. It wasn’t until COVID shut us all down that they found the time and space (on Zoom) to collaborate on the script, later developed with director Kate Champion.</p>
<p>Dirty Birds is indebted to Theatre of the Absurd. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/359954">Writing in the 1960s</a>, Martin Esslin brought an otherwise disconnected group of playwrights like Beckett, Adamov, Ionesco and Genet together under the umbrella term “Absurd”, coined via Albert Camus’ 1942 essay <a href="https://www2.hawaii.edu/%7Efreeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf">The Myth of Sisyphus</a>. </p>
<p>For Esslin, such theatre “strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach”. Emerging as it did after the horrors of the second world war, absurdism makes sense in a post-COVID work such as Dirty Birds.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tragedy-is-dead-in-australia-long-live-laughter-and-weather-reports-34185">Tragedy is dead in Australia, long live laughter and weather reports</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Are we inside or outside?</h2>
<p>At first the set (designed by Bruce McKinven) seems to be a single, nondescript brown house interior. But over the course of the play, with the addition of Paul Jackson’s lighting, a multitude of locational possibilities appear: an abandoned house; a submerged shipwreck; a cubby house; a cathedral; a doll house; a paper house; a box. </p>
<p>Matching the experience of the sisters, the longer the audience spends in the space, what seemed like the inside becomes the outside, until they are interchangeable. The interplay of McKinven and Jackson’s images do a lot of the narrative heavy lifting in terms of the structure, build and cumulative emphasis of the performance.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561498/original/file-20231124-17-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The stage, a house built of cardboard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561498/original/file-20231124-17-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561498/original/file-20231124-17-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561498/original/file-20231124-17-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561498/original/file-20231124-17-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561498/original/file-20231124-17-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561498/original/file-20231124-17-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561498/original/file-20231124-17-fo4hpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inside looking out, or outside looking in?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a sculptural quality to Champion’s use of static imagery in recurring sequences of one sister waiting for the other. Flickering through images like a life-sized flipbook, the sisters are in a constant state of waiting – perhaps the most well-known absurdist trope. </p>
<p>The sense of time passing could be minutes, years or forever. And yet, despite this stasis, as layers of costume are shed, there is a build from winter to spring, from dormant to active, until the expanse of time becomes today.</p>
<h2>You could be anyone else</h2>
<p>We are introduced to the sisters via their multiple alter egos as they pretend to be anyone other than themselves in a series of games and rituals that keep them separated from the outside world and embedded in their shared, internal world: both an escape and a trap. </p>
<p>In what could be a continuation of childhood games, the sisters play with tropes of Irish storytelling (tied to the McElhinneys’ own Irish heritage), 1950s American sitcoms and moments of camp horror. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561499/original/file-20231124-15-8g45hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The sisters dance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561499/original/file-20231124-15-8g45hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561499/original/file-20231124-15-8g45hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561499/original/file-20231124-15-8g45hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561499/original/file-20231124-15-8g45hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561499/original/file-20231124-15-8g45hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561499/original/file-20231124-15-8g45hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561499/original/file-20231124-15-8g45hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A childhood game – or an act of camp horror?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s a tonal touch of the psychological rivalry of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? – another story of sisters – of one sister being held captive by the other. </p>
<p>Having cobbled together their own personal mythology of stories, the sisters are pulled between the games and the outside world, where everything’s big except the conversations (which are small). There are glimpses of it via trips to the box (aka the letterbox) and the mounting foreclosure notices that culminate in a stunning visual cavalcade as the outside world awakens.</p>
<p>Unlike Beckett or Ionesco (the most famous of Esslin’s absurdists) Dirty Birds often breaks the conceit when one of the sisters (usually Hayley) brings them crashing into their present by referring to their predicament. The rules are also broken non-verbally when the other sister breaks the confinement of the house to appear at the edges.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-samuel-becketts-waiting-for-godot-a-tragicomedy-for-our-times-157962">Guide to the Classics: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a tragicomedy for our times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Well-worn relationships</h2>
<p>The McElhinneys have written themselves a spectacular showcase. The meta-quality of them as real sisters is unavoidable, and their compelling biological chemistry is on full display. Women’s bodies are central in this contemporary rendering of the Absurd. The stink of embodiment is tangible, comforting and symptomatic; it speaks to the joyous freedom as well as the suffocating snare of secretive, sisterly intimacy. </p>
<p>There are also moments of exquisite physical comedy emerging from the timing and repetition of a well-worn relationship.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561497/original/file-20231124-26-cvpb0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3982%2C2652&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two sisters on stage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561497/original/file-20231124-26-cvpb0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3982%2C2652&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561497/original/file-20231124-26-cvpb0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561497/original/file-20231124-26-cvpb0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561497/original/file-20231124-26-cvpb0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561497/original/file-20231124-26-cvpb0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561497/original/file-20231124-26-cvpb0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561497/original/file-20231124-26-cvpb0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The biological chemistry is palpable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant/BSSTC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Esslin refuted the common misconception that Theatre of the Absurd should necessarily be despair-filled and meaningless. Rather, he saw these plays as an “endeavour to come to terms with the world”, to “face up to the human condition as it really is” and free us “from illusions that are bound to cause constant maladjustment and disappointment”. </p>
<p>Or, as theatre critic Michael Y. Bennett <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19646109-reassessing-the-theatre-of-the-absurd">argues</a>, absurdist plays are “ethical parables that force the audience to make life meaningful”. </p>
<p>As the sisters grapple with themselves and each other, between taking personal responsibility or being overwhelmed by despair, what perseveres is the poignancy of their connection and in the play’s final moments the endurance of hope.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Dirty Birds, from Black Swan State Theatre Company, is at the Heath Ledger Theatre, Perth, until December 10.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leah Mercer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dirty Birds at Black Swan State Theatre Company is the debut play by the McElhinney sisters, and the first time they’ve shared the stage.Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2175612023-11-17T03:54:30Z2023-11-17T03:54:30ZPlay School meets Ikea: new Australian play Welcome to Your New Life hilariously captures new motherhood<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560092/original/file-20231116-19-nz4fa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C10%2C6688%2C3968&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Byrne/STCSA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anna Goldsworthy’s hilarious and beautifully honest book Welcome To Your New Life celebrates the joy and roller-coaster ride of first-time parenting.</p>
<p>Now a new play adapted for the stage by Goldsworthy, Welcome To Your New Life takes the audience through the experience of pregnancy, delivery and new parenthood from sleep-deprived birth to toddler years. </p>
<p>Goldsworthy’s lively writing – monologues interspersed with vignettes, songs and small scenes – deftly captures the joy and wilful naivety of a first pregnancy, followed by the overwhelming love and sleep-deprivation-induced anxiety of the first months. As a mother of two I laughed, scoffed, giggled and cried in recognition and remembrance of the bliss and insanity of being a newly minted parent. </p>
<p>Erin James excels as the unnamed mum-to-be/new mum: her delight is infectious, her navigating of what other people expect when you’re expecting is razor-sharp, and her post-natal anxiety spirals heartbreaking in their relentlessness. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-to-describe-the-complexity-and-absurdity-of-motherhood-181066">Is it possible to describe the complexity and absurdity of motherhood?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A joy</h2>
<p>All three actors are a sheer joy to watch.</p>
<p>Family and friends, medical professionals, passers-by, the family dog and assorted new mothers are deftly brought to life by Kathryn Adams and Matt Crook. Crook’s breastfeeding patronising new mum is a highlight, as is Adams’ lactation consultant. Crook and Adams also each take on key roles in the new mum’s life.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560094/original/file-20231116-15-e2ewrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and a woman ham for the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560094/original/file-20231116-15-e2ewrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560094/original/file-20231116-15-e2ewrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560094/original/file-20231116-15-e2ewrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560094/original/file-20231116-15-e2ewrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560094/original/file-20231116-15-e2ewrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560094/original/file-20231116-15-e2ewrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560094/original/file-20231116-15-e2ewrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cast are a joy to watch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Byrne/STCSA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The mum’s much-loved grandmother Moggie is given warmth, humour and depth by Adams in a masterful performance. The love and support between the mum and Moggie is one of the relationships we see in detail; her kind comforting of the frazzled mother is part of the human heart of this piece. Through her, we are invited to reflect on the cycle of life and death that is the human condition.</p>
<p>The other detailed relationship is the devoted, then exhausted, husband-and-father Nicholas, played by Crook with superb skill and uncanny accuracy. His scenes with James – welcome moments in the play where the story is told in duologue – are lively and nuanced. A scene where the accumulated lack of sleep while on a blackly funny holiday finally brings them to shouting point is given devastating honesty by Crook. </p>
<h2>Adoring and cooing</h2>
<p>Beautifully directed by Shannon Rush, the first act centres on the mum-to-be. Rush repeatedly seats James on a circular couch chair in the middle of a circular Mondrian-esque rug, evoking the baby in the womb. </p>
<p>As the audience, in the second act we are positioned as “you”, the much-adored new baby. The performers focus their attention on different audience members as if they are the baby – adoring and cooing, marvelling at the developmental brilliance or bodily functions of this miracle child.</p>
<p>Simon Greer’s set is a child’s playroom on a giant scale, the actors tiny among the huge letter blocks, doors, box shelves and giant hanging mobile. Huge wooden toys serve as stethoscopes and seats, even the ever-present mobile phones are flat blocks of wood: it’s Play School meets Ikea. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560091/original/file-20231116-20-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560091/original/file-20231116-20-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560091/original/file-20231116-20-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560091/original/file-20231116-20-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560091/original/file-20231116-20-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560091/original/file-20231116-20-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560091/original/file-20231116-20-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560091/original/file-20231116-20-xjji4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simon Greer’s set is a child’s playroom on a giant scale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Byrne/STCSA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second act is stripped back, all bleached white scandi surfaces, giant alphabet blocks now lined up neatly along the walls, centre stage starkly empty – perfectly reflecting the too-bright world of post-natal sleep deprivation and its resultant devastating anxiety. </p>
<p>Gavin Norris’ lighting is simple and elegant: the massive contemporary light circle also eerily suggesting the too-bright light above the delivery-room bed.</p>
<h2>A play with music</h2>
<p>Billed as “a play with music”, composer Alan John’s music is beautifully wrapped around and through the story. Woven through the scenes are classical piano music and John’s songs, evoking and quoting nursery rhymes, or giving voice to key moments. Heartbeats and baby screaming are part of an ebbing and flowing sound design by Andrew Howard.</p>
<p>A large toy piano is a reminder of Goldsworthy’s life as a concert pianist. Key moments play out here: the mum plays music to negotiate the challenges she faces, and the ultimate new project: birthing a baby.</p>
<p>The three performers play toy pianos, glockenspiels, guitar and percussion, and also sing beautifully in harmony. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560093/original/file-20231116-17-hgq4yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman stands in front of a toilet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560093/original/file-20231116-17-hgq4yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560093/original/file-20231116-17-hgq4yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560093/original/file-20231116-17-hgq4yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560093/original/file-20231116-17-hgq4yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560093/original/file-20231116-17-hgq4yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560093/original/file-20231116-17-hgq4yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560093/original/file-20231116-17-hgq4yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A song about a composting toilet is a particular delight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Byrne/STCSA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Inevitably there is some unevenness to this new show: some of the monologue songs in act one are less melodic and more difficult to access emotionally for the audience, but James’ clear voice shines, especially in the lush and dramatic piece about the dangers to a baby of a composting toilet. </p>
<p>In her program notes, Goldsworthy reflects on childbirth and parenting, a time when “survival becomes a greater priority than making art”. </p>
<p>Thank goodness for Goldsworthy’s writer’s reflex recording all her pregnancy-birth-post-partum experiences as they happened. Hilarious, insightful, heartfelt and zinging with the ping of recognition for parents and anyone who’s watched others go through this, Welcome To Your New Life is an important and wonderful new arrival.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Welcome to your New Life is on at the State Theatre Company South Australia until November 25.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anna Goldsworthy’s lively writing deftly captures the joy and wilful naivety of a first pregnancy, followed by the overwhelming love and sleep-deprivation-induced anxiety of the first months.Catherine Campbell, Lecturer, Performing Arts, UniSA Creative, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173662023-11-17T02:07:29Z2023-11-17T02:07:29ZBelvoir’s The Master and Margarita: astonishingly ambitious, physically demanding and a resounding success<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560084/original/file-20231116-19-ao2o82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C1905%2C1273&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Belvoir</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult novel The Master and Margarita has inspired many artists. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/the-rolling-stones-sympathy-for-the-devil-feature/">Mick Jagger</a> drew on the novel when penning the lyrics for Sympathy for the Devil. <a href="https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=modlangrussian">Salman Rushdie</a> did something similar when writing The Satanic Verses. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-01/master-and-margarita-mikhail-bulgakov-legacy-russia-and-beyond/12465490">Baz Luhrmann</a> bought the film rights for Bulgakov’s book back in 2019. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/mar/18/master-margarita-fiends-reunited-review">Federico Fellini</a> and <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/black-snow-9781409090342">Terry Gilliam</a> are two other noted filmmakers who have expressed an interest in adapting the novel.</p>
<p>If and when he does film The Master and Margarita, Luhrmann would do well to refer to Eamon Flack’s riotous new stage interpretation.</p>
<h2>Literary legend</h2>
<p>A physician by trade, Bulgakov, who was born in Kyiv in 1891 and died in Moscow in 1940, turned his hand to writing in the 1910s. During his lifetime, he was best known as a playwright. Bulgakov’s biggest success was the 1925 play The Days of the Turbins, a theatrical adaptation of his novel The White Guard, also published in 1925.</p>
<p>The theme of that play was the bloody and savage Russian Civil War. Despite being highly critical of Lenin and his band of Communists, Bulgakov’s play was much admired by the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin, who reportedly watched it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/mar/20/will-self-white-guard-bulgakov">at least 15 times</a>. </p>
<p>Like The Days of the Turbins, The Master and Margarita – best thought of as a supernatural satire – was scathing when it came to the excesses and repressions associated with Soviet Communism. </p>
<p>The fraught and protracted compositional history of the novel is the stuff of literary legend. Written between 1928 and 1940, Bulgakov’s novel was drafted in secret and subject to censorship at the hands of the Soviet state, and was not published in full until 1967.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560085/original/file-20231116-17-bg9ohl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman on stage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560085/original/file-20231116-17-bg9ohl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560085/original/file-20231116-17-bg9ohl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560085/original/file-20231116-17-bg9ohl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560085/original/file-20231116-17-bg9ohl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560085/original/file-20231116-17-bg9ohl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560085/original/file-20231116-17-bg9ohl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560085/original/file-20231116-17-bg9ohl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Master and Margarita revolves around a visit by the devil and their entourage to Moscow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Belvoir</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The plot of the epic novel, now regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, revolves around a visit by the devil and their entourage to Moscow. The devil (in a nod to Goethe’s Faust) assumes the guise of a certain Professor Woland, and sets about challenging state-sponsored beliefs about religion and personal conduct. Chaos ensues.</p>
<p>In his directorial notes, Flack, who worked on the adaptation with Tom Wright as dramaturg, describes being drawn to the novel’s “magical ability to outwit and outlive dogma, authoritarianism, repression and fear”. </p>
<p>By and large, Flack’s play, which places great emphasis on spectacle (if sometimes at the expense of the original’s satire), is a resounding success. While some of the critiques of contemporary Australian life in the play are at times a touch jarring, the company’s steadfast commitment to theatrical risk-taking and innovation is admirable. </p>
<p>I was particularly taken with the cast and artistic team’s compelling use of stage magic, speaking to the magical realist strands found in Bulgakov’s novel, while generating a series of genuinely beautiful tableaux.</p>
<h2>Astonishingly ambitious</h2>
<p>When we enter the theatre, the stage is almost completely bare and the walls have been painted black. Three members of the ensemble enter. Matilda Ridgway, excellent as the play’s narrator, picks up a battered paperback copy of Bulgakov’s novel, left in the middle of the otherwise empty stage. The trio then start to read aloud, and the stage begins to turn.</p>
<p>Following this introductory act of incantation, the devil – portrayed with aplomb by Paula Arundell – makes their entrance. So, too, does the devil’s entourage, which includes, memorably, a big black talking cat called Behemoth (played with great comedic brio by Josh Price). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560086/original/file-20231116-15-k87l2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man reads a book, another man dressed as a cat holds him by the nape of his neck." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560086/original/file-20231116-15-k87l2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560086/original/file-20231116-15-k87l2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560086/original/file-20231116-15-k87l2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560086/original/file-20231116-15-k87l2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560086/original/file-20231116-15-k87l2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560086/original/file-20231116-15-k87l2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560086/original/file-20231116-15-k87l2k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Behemoth is played with great comedic brio by Josh Price.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Belvoir</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We are then introduced to a host of historically and geographically disparate characters, including the Master (Mark Leonard Winter) and his beloved Margarita (a standout performance by Anna Sansom), along with a wandering philosopher by the name of Yeshua (Winter), interrogated at the hands of Pontius Pilate (Marco Chiappi). </p>
<p>From here, we follow our characters through time and space as narratives unfold, supported by remarkable use of the revolving stage by cast and crew.</p>
<p>What we have here is an astonishingly ambitious – and physically demanding – work of adaptation, which runs for almost three hours. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560089/original/file-20231116-17-jko3k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cast on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560089/original/file-20231116-17-jko3k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560089/original/file-20231116-17-jko3k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560089/original/file-20231116-17-jko3k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560089/original/file-20231116-17-jko3k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560089/original/file-20231116-17-jko3k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560089/original/file-20231116-17-jko3k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/560089/original/file-20231116-17-jko3k.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The company’s steadfast commitment to theatrical risk-taking and creativity is admirable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman/Belvoir</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite its lengthy running time, the play never lags. The uniformly excellent ensemble, who make good use of music and physical comedy, succeed in capturing and then holding our attention. This, to my mind, is a measure of the play’s success. It also demonstrates that there is a real desire for fresh and creative approaches to contemporary theatre.</p>
<p>Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/theatre/this-book-inspired-mick-jagger-terrifies-vladimir-putin-and-may-be-cursed-20231011-p5ebi8.html">Flack spoke</a> to precisely this point. Part of Bulgakov’s enduring appeal, for Flack, has to do with the fact that “you can just begin by thinking differently and imagining differently”. </p>
<p>Flack started work on this adaptation during lockdowns, working with actors to devise scenes based on the novel. It was a collaborative process that would stretch out over two years – much longer than the standard development time for a new Australian play.</p>
<p>Flack concedes this “new way of working that we’ve been trying out might bomb badly, but it might break through into something. And that’s what the arts should be.” </p>
<p>Were he alive today, I imagine Mikhail Bulgakov would wholeheartedly approve of this adaptation. </p>
<p><em>The Master and Margarita is at Belvoir, Sydney, until December 10.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-theatre-companies-are-shunning-shakespeare-a-much-needed-break-or-a-mistake-215597">Australian theatre companies are shunning Shakespeare. A much-needed break, or a mistake?</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Eamon Flack gives Bulgakov’s classic epic novel a riotous interpretation.Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2164692023-11-01T11:35:18Z2023-11-01T11:35:18ZDear England: ‘feelgood’ Gareth Southgate play reviewed by a sports coaching expert<p><a href="https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/dear-england/">Dear England</a>, a play about football manager Gareth Southgate, immaculately encapsulates the light and dark sides of the game.</p>
<p>At the start of the play – which recently transferred to the Prince Edward Theatre – Southgate watches his earlier self <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pytk8d_yBTI">missing the crucial penalty against Germany</a> that sent the men’s England team crashing out of the Uefa Euro tournament in 1996. It’s an old wound that refuses to heal. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Dear England.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The loss sparked <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iikWy2iwFeM">dejected England fans</a> to vandalise German cars, and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/dear-england-prince-edward-theatre-review-joseph-fiennes/">burn Southgate effigies</a>. Despite his emotional baggage, circumstances thrust Southgate into the managerial role 20 years later. </p>
<p>The play shows how he selected a young, talented, multicultural squad. But also how he sensed that for them to survive the pressures of expectation, he needed to cultivate <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew-Slater-3/publication/342530780_LEADERSHIP_AND_SOCIAL_IDENTITY/links/5efa0ea245851550507b2ffd/LEADERSHIP-AND-SOCIAL-IDENTITY.pdf">a supportive, collective culture</a> that transcended violent, racist, hyper-masculine football narratives.</p>
<h2>Sport on stage</h2>
<p>Portraying football on stage is tricky, but the superb staging – featuring a centre circle and a hovering illuminated halo intimating the iconic Wembley arch – provides an evocative setting. </p>
<p>Joseph Fiennes’s portrayal of Southgate is masterful, embodying his essence with nuanced mannerisms and timbre, without resorting to caricature. Southgate is portrayed as self-deprecating, an unlikely leader and a reluctant figurehead. Brought in to provide stability, he enacts revolutionary change.</p>
<p>Playwright James Graham’s script is witty. Harry Kane’s (Will Close) depiction as an awkward communicator with a curious voice steals the most laughs. This poignantly pays off later when the audience is humbled by listening to the character lamenting that people denigrate him for his vocal shortcomings. </p>
<p>Jordan Pickford’s (Josh Barrow) character adheres to the stereotype of the goalkeeper as a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdqcCARcDDY">crazy man</a>”, but is amusingly endearing. A liberal amount of swearing had the audience creasing up, while epitomising the gritty underbelly of football. There was a broad range of famous character cameos, adding interest and jovial familiarity, but sometimes smacking of <a href="https://theconversation.com/spitting-image-the-puppet-satire-that-captured-thatchers-britain-107241">Spitting Image</a>.</p>
<h2>Southgate’s tactics</h2>
<p>The play also explores the existential crisis of what it means to be the England team. In an age of increasing societal division and inequality, who and what do the team want to be, and represent? </p>
<p>Southgate urges the players to contribute to the vision and take responsibility for co-constructing a modern football identity. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17430437.2020.1810021">Their challenge</a> is to move beyond the football superiority complex of the past, to forge a spirit of togetherness and belief.</p>
<p>Psychologist <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/07/21/meet-pippa-grange-doctor-helped-transform-england-football-team/">Pippa Grange</a> (Dervla Kirwan) is recruited to help players confront their fears and confide in one another about insecurities. Southgate displays much soul-searching in overcoming his own traumas, and in attempting to bind the group together. Grange’s character is almost a manifestation of Southgate’s consciousness, as he attempts to enact change in himself and others.</p>
<h2>Penalties in the play</h2>
<p>Penalties, the ultimate high-pressure football test, are a significant part of this drama, acting as a vehicle through which Southgate encourages the players to <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Fear_Less/NqGwDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Fear+Less:+How+to+Win+at+Life+Without+Losing+Yourself&printsec=frontcover">fear less</a> and to find strength and love in unity. </p>
<p>England broke their run of bad penalty shoot-out luck under Southgate in the 2018 World Cup. But they then lost the subsequent one in the Euro 2020 final, where Southgate’s decisions unintentionally exposed unsuccessful penalty takers Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/12/football/england-racist-abuse-bukayo-saka-jadon-sancho-marcus-rashford-euro-2020-final-spt-intl/index.html">to racist abuse</a>.</p>
<p>In Dear England, Southgate comes across as a quietly heroic, decent man, cultivating a culture where players are empowered to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029220301497">take the risks necessary</a> to achieve greatness. Ultimately, Southgate and England learn how to play with joy, lose with dignity, survive trauma and emerge in more meaningful roles. </p>
<p>For Southgate that means supporting others compassionately to achieve in the psychologically safe environment he did not experience himself. </p>
<p>We still lack the unwritten final act denouement, which for England managers is rarely satisfying. Euro 2024 is likely to be Southgate’s last tournament as national manager, but he will surely embrace the challenge, and try once more.</p>
<p>Fundamentally, Dear England is a feelgood play, as evidenced by the enthusiastic standing ovation, clapping and singing of Sweet Caroline at the performance I attended. Dear England exceeded my expectations, and its unusual fare might attract a non-traditional theatre audience to bravely shelve their doubts and with an open-heartedness, connect with a different story.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The play captures the light and dark sides of the beautiful game.David Turner, Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2127052023-10-12T03:48:47Z2023-10-12T03:48:47ZVenus and Adonis: this ‘play within a plague’ about Shakespeare is wildly romantic, erotic and colourful<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553128/original/file-20231010-23-zewfin.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C1071%2C717&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kate Williams/Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Shakespeare wrote his famous narrative poem <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_and_Adonis_(Shakespeare_poem)">Venus and Adonis</a> in a lockdown era when, in 1593, the <a href="https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/speaking-what-we-feel-shakespeares-plague-plays/">bubonic plague</a> closed the theatres in London for 18 months. </p>
<p>In Shakespeare’s poem Venus, the Roman goddess of love, continuously tries to seduce the human Adonis, who would rather go hunting with the lads than be caught kissing a goddess. </p>
<p>Shakespeare’s poem liberates female desire by having Venus lament that Adonis won’t gratify her sexually. Shakespeare makes Venus physically larger than Adonis, who struggles to defuse her lust. At one stage, Venus rips Adonis off his horse to carry him under her arm. </p>
<p>Although Adonis resists Venus, the sensuous eros in the verse of Shakespeare’s clever treatment certainly helped to drive its popularity:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Fondling,” she saith, “since I have hemmed thee here <br>
Within the circuit of this ivory pale, <br>
I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer; <br>
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale: <br>
Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, <br>
Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. <br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shakespeare’s poem has been called the <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-50-shades-of-shakespeare-how-the-bard-sexed-things-up-106783">Fifty Shades of Grey of its day</a> – a trite comparison in literary terms, but a fair comparison for its commercial popularity and erotic content. </p>
<p>Educated young men – and Queen Elizabeth I, according to Damien Ryan’s new play – kept a copy of the narrative poem under their pillow. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553130/original/file-20231010-19-f56yvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman reads over a fire." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553130/original/file-20231010-19-f56yvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553130/original/file-20231010-19-f56yvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553130/original/file-20231010-19-f56yvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553130/original/file-20231010-19-f56yvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553130/original/file-20231010-19-f56yvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553130/original/file-20231010-19-f56yvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553130/original/file-20231010-19-f56yvi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Copies of the poem were reportedly kept under pillows.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kate Williams/Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove</span></span>
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<p>Ryan touts his Venus and Adonis as a "play within a plague”, yet it is more daring and ambitious than a mere adaptation of the poem. Here we have a speculative history play that culminates in Shakespeare (Anthony Gooley) and his actors performing his famous erotic poem before the queen (Belinda Giblin). </p>
<p>Ryan’s company Sport for Jove was initially forced to shoot the play as a film during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, so a “play within a plague” seems very apt. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-50-shades-of-shakespeare-how-the-bard-sexed-things-up-106783">Friday essay: 50 shades of Shakespeare - how the Bard sexed things up</a>
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<h2>Tragical-comical-historical-pastoral</h2>
<p>With super-dynamic set design and costumes by Damien Ryan and Bernadette Ryan, Venus and Adonis is largely comical, but also tragic; wildly romantic, yet erotic and colourful. </p>
<p>We jump from the rooms of an Elizabethan doctor, who earns his bread-and-butter treating sexually transmitted diseases, to Shakespeare’s bedroom in London and his entanglements with his mistress <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilia_Lanier">Aemilia Lanyer</a> (Adele Querol), a proto-feminist poet who became the first English woman to publish her own poetry in her own name in 1611. </p>
<p>Shakespeare helps Lanyer with her quest to publish (at the same time stealing her ideas for his own verse), but tragedy strikes home in Stratford with the loss of Shakespeare’s only son Hamnet. But soon Shakespeare’s company is called to perform his popular poem before the queen.</p>
<p>The editors of the First Folio might ask if this play is a comedy, history or tragedy. Perhaps Ryan would call on Hamlet’s Polonius to declare this play a very fine “<a href="https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:1m2846&datastreamId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF">tragical-comical-historical-pastoral</a>”.</p>
<p>Ryan’s bawdy realism renders Shakespeare with many endearing quirks: his syphilis, his nakedness, his sexual affairs, his bi-curiosity, his laconic demeanour, his bewilderment at his own abilities, and the neglect of his family in Stratford. </p>
<p>But Ryan also consciously aims to liberate three women who influenced Shakespeare, often eclipsed by the shadow of Shakespeare’s monolithic achievements. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553131/original/file-20231010-23-nu08z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People sit around on a stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553131/original/file-20231010-23-nu08z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553131/original/file-20231010-23-nu08z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553131/original/file-20231010-23-nu08z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553131/original/file-20231010-23-nu08z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553131/original/file-20231010-23-nu08z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553131/original/file-20231010-23-nu08z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553131/original/file-20231010-23-nu08z9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ryan consciously aims to liberate three women who influenced Shakespeare.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kate Williams/Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove</span></span>
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<p>Clearly attracted to verse, Aemilia Lanyer is construed as the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Lady_(Shakespeare)">Dark Lady</a>” mistress of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Querol drives the energy of the play to become its co-protagonist.</p>
<p>Bernadette Ryan plays a searing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hathaway_(wife_of_Shakespeare)">Agnes Hathaway</a>, Shakespeare’s neglected wife, too jaded by his absence to relish the sweetness of their romantic youth. </p>
<p>Giblin’s Queen Elizabeth is a cantankerous, yet savvy, f-Bomb-dropping patron of the arts. In one breath she pontificates as an elderly virgin queen; in the next she orders two athletic performers to her bedroom.</p>
<h2>A vivid telling</h2>
<p>The second act, concerning the rehearsal and performance of Shakespeare’s poem before the queen, rollicks forward like a rollercoaster that has, until then, climbed incrementally through the first act. </p>
<p>The second half intertwines multiple strands of drama and intrigue. The queen sits amid the audience and comments on the action (hilariously) in ways we wouldn’t dare. Her attending ladies swoon for handsome Adonis, who wishes he was Venus kissing the boys. </p>
<p>The performance goes off the rails, but the poetry shines, and the queen compares it to the brilliant work of a female poet she has just read – not realising the poet, Lanyer, has been playing Venus. Then enters the ghost of young Hamnet…</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553129/original/file-20231010-25-ivx64a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553129/original/file-20231010-25-ivx64a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553129/original/file-20231010-25-ivx64a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553129/original/file-20231010-25-ivx64a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553129/original/file-20231010-25-ivx64a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553129/original/file-20231010-25-ivx64a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553129/original/file-20231010-25-ivx64a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553129/original/file-20231010-25-ivx64a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The play culminates in a performance of Shakespeare’s poem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kate Williams/Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The action is admirably supported by Shakespeare’s leading man, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Burbage">Richard Burbage</a> (Christopher Tomkinson), his leading clown <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Armin">Robert Armin</a> (Kevin MacIsaac) and Shakespeare’s grown up “boy player” <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Field">Nathaniel Field</a> (Jerome Meyer), utterly appalled he must play the male Adonis instead of Venus. </p>
<p>Ryan capably navigates the diverse space of the cross-dressing rehearsal room and the queered space of poetic patronage and sonnet sequence circulation. </p>
<p>If Polonius never quite envisioned what he meant by a “tragical-comical-historical-pastoral”, Ryan’s Venus and Adonis delivers this hybrid form vividly in spades.</p>
<p><em>Venus and Adonis from Sport for Jove is at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, until October 21.</em></p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hamlet-a-play-that-speaks-to-pandemics-past-and-present-165106">Hamlet: a play that speaks to pandemics past and present</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212705/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kirk Dodd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This new work from Sport for Jove is more daring and ambitious than a mere adaptation of Shakespeare’s poem.Kirk Dodd, Lecturer in English and Writing, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147532023-10-09T17:19:19Z2023-10-09T17:19:19ZThe Tony Blair Rock Opera features bagpipes, Lady Macbeth and a wrestling match with Gordon Brown<p>If you’re looking for subtlety and sophistication, Harry Hill and Steve Brown’s <a href="https://tonyblairrockopera.co.uk/">Tony! The Tony Blair Rock Opera</a> is probably not for you. It starts – literally – with a bang and careens through a hectic hour and a half of high-energy songs and skits. </p>
<p>The committed cast are happy to provide their audience with caricatures, as opposed to characters. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Prescott">John Prescott</a> (Rosie Strobel) is portrayed as a professional northerner, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robin-Cook">Robin Cook</a> (Sally Cheng) as a priapic ginger gnome, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cherie-Booth">Cherie Blair</a> (Tori Burgess) as a sharp-tongued Scouser – you get the picture.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qKf-RIOvoVk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Tony Blair Rock Opera.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Although the occasional joke misfires (blind <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Blunkett">David Blunkett</a> walking into a door frame, really?) and some of the actors’ accents are as woeful as the deliberately dodgy wigs they whip on and off, it works on its own terms.</p>
<p>The music and the lyrics might not be that memorable, but the songs rhyme well. In the run up to the 1992 election, for example, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Neil-Kinnock-Baron-Kinnock-of-Bedwellty">Neil Kinnock</a> (Martin Johnston) sings: “We’ve been waiting in the valleys, I’ve been storming it at rallies.” And <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-princess-dianas-death-came-to-define-tragedy-for-the-media-82939">Princess Diana’s fatal accident</a> is neatly, if rather bluntly, summed up as “the chauffeur was smashed, no wonder he crashed”. </p>
<p>And they cohere nicely – perhaps even especially – when they stray beyond the bounds of good taste. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Osama-bin-Laden">Osama Bin Laden</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/saddam-hussein-how-a-deadly-purge-of-opponents-set-up-his-ruthless-dictatorship-120748">Saddam Hussein’s</a> numbers (the latter done via a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Groucho-Marx">Groucho Marx</a> impression) are a case in point.</p>
<p>The occasional cameos are particularly well done (Britpop’s Liam Gallagher was a favourite of mine), the impressively athletic choreography is basic but effective and one or two of the set pieces work particularly well. The momentous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jun/06/labour.uk">Granita deal</a> (at which <a href="https://theconversation.com/gordon-brown-political-giant-and-wasted-talent-at-the-same-time-34673">Brown was persuaded</a> to give Blair a free run at the leadership in the wake of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/12/newsid_2550000/2550803.stm">John Smith’s untimely death</a>) is staged as a wrestling match complete with ropes and shiny leotards. Believe it or not, this actually conveyed what was allegedly discussed and agreed during that dinner pretty accurately.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-princess-diana-story-why-everyone-has-their-own-version-82224">The 'Princess Diana story': why everyone has their own version</a>
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<h2>The show’s limitations</h2>
<p>So far, so good(ish), then. But there are some downsides. The most obvious is that in order to get most of the rock opera’s jokes, you probably had to be there – “there” being the 1990s and the early 2000s. Those under 50 might struggle to appreciate some of the political and cultural references, unless they’ve done or are doing a politics degree that covered the New Labour years.</p>
<p>Having not only lived through them but taught them, too, I had no trouble. But that didn’t mean I had no problems with the show.</p>
<p>First and foremost, it fell into the trap of inferring that Blair (Jack Whittle) was driven almost entirely by his love of the limelight. As a result, he is portrayed as an amoral airhead throughout – a puppet whose strings were pulled by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Mandelson">Peter Mandelson</a> (Howard Samuels). </p>
<p>In reality, I suspect even Blair’s toughest critics wouldn’t deny that his extraordinary powers of communication rested not just on his natural charisma but on a penetrating intelligence, too. Nor would they deny he was animated by a passion to do what – by his own lights anyway – was right.</p>
<p>Whether that sense of moral purpose (misguided or otherwise) deserted Blair once he left Downing Street and entered the shadowy world of high-paid, globetrotting consultancy is another story. But it’s a story that the authors (who were apparently determined not to write something too long) stop short of telling.</p>
<p>Other all too familiar tropes are much in evidence. Mandelson, who is effectively the narrator of the show, is predictably portrayed – albeit with considerable aplomb – as some sort of vampire or Mephistopheles. And by the same token, Cherie, although wonderfully played, is presented (not for the first nor, I suspect, the last time) as Lady Macbeth.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Gordon Brown comes over (very amusingly, as far as the audience were concerned) as a stereotypical angry Scotsman. <a href="https://twitter.com/campbellclaret?lang=en">Alastair Campbell</a>, for good or ill, only gets a brief walk-on part, coming on, complete with kilt and bagpipes, after the ghost of Princess Diana has – bear with me – persuaded Blair to sex up the “dodgy dossier”.</p>
<p>My main gripe, however, was with the supposedly showstopping last number. Blair, not unreasonably, reminds the audience that 9.5 million of us voted him in for a third term, notwithstanding his decision to go to war in Iraq. The song that follows declares that “The whole wide world is led by assholes”, accompanied by pictures of a bunch of strongmen leaders from around the world.</p>
<p>To equate the UK’s prime minister, however little one may think of him, with the likes of <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-recap-kim-jong-un-visits-putin-for-arms-for-tech-talks-while-kyiv-urges-west-for-longer-range-missiles-to-aid-counteroffensive-213603">Kim Jong Un</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/bashar-al-assad-13775">Bashar al-Assad</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/vladimir-putin-6680">Putin</a> seems, to me at least, a category error. And, even if you disagree, the underlying message merely serves up more of the populist take on politics that, frankly, we could probably do with rather less of these days.</p>
<p>That said, if you happen to be in Liverpool for the <a href="https://labour.org.uk/conference/">Labour Party conference</a> next week, don’t miss the chance to go see it at the city’s Playhouse. You might not love it, but there’s no way it won’t leave you laughing.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Bale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Written by comedian Harry Hill, it’s a hectic hour-and-a-half of high-energy songs and skits.Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2143672023-10-03T04:36:46Z2023-10-03T04:36:46ZMy Sister Jill: Patricia Cornelius’ new play is a blistering post-war social and cultural commentary<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551612/original/file-20231003-22-sjuwc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C6%2C4236%2C2816&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Walker/MTC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Emerging from one of Australia’s most enduring and significant theatrical partnerships between director Susie Dee and playwright Patricia Cornelius, My Sister Jill is a contemporary homage to George Johnston’s classic 1964 Australian novel My Brother Jack. </p>
<p>Both these works are set in post-war suburban Australia in the 1960s. But instead of the longing for the classic values of an older Australia that valorise war heroism and stoic masculinity, My Sister Jill centres the perspectives of those impacted by this narrative. </p>
<p>Parents Jack (Ian Bliss), a war veteran and prisoner of war from Changi on the Thai-Burma railway, and Martha (Maude Davey) have five children. Jill (Lucy Goleby), the eldest daughter, is intelligent and fierce. Johnnie (James O'Connell) frequently experiences his father’s violent ire as he is deemed “soft”. Door (Benjamin Nichol) and Mouse (Zachary Pidd) are twin brothers with mental telepathy and a joyful desire to be physically close at all times. </p>
<p>Christine (Angourie Rice), the youngest, plays the narrator. She seeks to connect with and understand her father through his stories of the horrors of war, sometimes biting off more than she can chew when the tales become deeply bleak and disturbing. </p>
<p>In a blistering post-war social and cultural commentary, My Sister Jill disrupts ideas of colonial glory with a troubling depiction of family violence, PTSD, homophobia and the ruinous intergenerational impacts of patriarchal oppression on everyone.</p>
<h2>The volatility of trauma</h2>
<p>The show is set in and around the family’s weatherboard home, and the set design by Marg Horwell features a beautifully restored 1953 FX Holden on stage. </p>
<p>It is a pared back, familiar landscape of dry yellow light, lino tiles, fading wallpaper and porch chairs, and the site of a cultural identity permeated by patriarchal violence from the perspective of White Australian culture. </p>
<p>As the story progresses, the children grow up under the volatility of their father’s trauma. They are frustrated by their mother’s fear and inaction. We witness Jack’s anger and violence toward his wife and children, his alcoholism and failure to hold down a job, his nightmarish memories and the anti-therapeutic 1960s attitude towards mental health. In one scene we watch Martha diligently “change the subject” to bring Jack back from the emotional edge as his memories of war threaten to overwhelm him. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551613/original/file-20231003-26-eqmv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A weatherboard house." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551613/original/file-20231003-26-eqmv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551613/original/file-20231003-26-eqmv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551613/original/file-20231003-26-eqmv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551613/original/file-20231003-26-eqmv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551613/original/file-20231003-26-eqmv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551613/original/file-20231003-26-eqmv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551613/original/file-20231003-26-eqmv5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The set is a pared back, familiar landscape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Walker/MTC</span></span>
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<p>Jack’s story about surviving a torpedoing of a Japanese freighter by clinging to a raft while covered in thick black oil is taken from aspects of Cornelius’ own father’s life. The harrowing details of this particular scene as Jack recalls this moment of survival to Christine are profound and unsettling. </p>
<p>On stage, Christine is deeply impacted by this story, its retelling taking her into an imagined reality too frightening to contemplate. War is hell, the play reminds us, an indiscriminate false moral vacuum full of deep harm. Any notion of national pride that persists constitutes a dangerous narrative that whitewashes the violence of colonisation in our own backyards and homes. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-shell-shock-to-ptsd-proof-of-wars-traumatic-history-37858">From shell shock to PTSD: proof of war's traumatic history</a>
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<h2>Idealism and false promise</h2>
<p>Throughout the play, Jill emerges as a resistor to her father, incapable of holding back her fury at his behaviour. </p>
<p>Jill carefully looks after Johnnie when he returns to bed with urine-soaked pyjamas after being beaten. We see her refusing to wait inside the freezing cold FX Holden with the others when Jack leaves his family for hours outside the pub. Ultimately Jill is unable to “cut her father some slack”, as her mother suggests. She continually confronts her father, is forced to leave school and find work and ultimately moves out of home and becomes an organiser of anti-war demonstrations. </p>
<p>Christine travels from undying support of the wonderful father hero and a desire to head to war herself, to becoming the only child left in the family home. At this point, as she describes her father yelling at her mother all day long, she begins to echo her sister Jill’s intolerance of her dad and we see the full circle impact of intergenerational trauma. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551614/original/file-20231003-21-zqq5eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The family look out as if watching television." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551614/original/file-20231003-21-zqq5eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551614/original/file-20231003-21-zqq5eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551614/original/file-20231003-21-zqq5eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551614/original/file-20231003-21-zqq5eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551614/original/file-20231003-21-zqq5eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551614/original/file-20231003-21-zqq5eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551614/original/file-20231003-21-zqq5eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We see the full circle impact of intergenerational trauma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Walker/MTC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Christine reunites with Jill as a young adult, about to head to university, the first of the family to attend. Jill is proud of her, and promises she, too, will attend university one day. We are reminded of what has been lost for Jill. Christine speaks to the audience one of the last lines in the play “She will, won’t she, My Sister Jill? She will. Will she?” </p>
<p>Wrapped up in this moment is the idealism and false promise of the late 1960s Australia. </p>
<p>My Sister Jill raises the spectre of the question about what has changed in Australian culture since that time and what harmful narratives we continue to deny – or are we now able to collectively address? </p>
<p>One can only hope the answer to Christine’s question “will she?” is, like the answer to other questions aimed at addressing the ongoing impact of colonial violence on our national culture, a huge resounding yes.</p>
<p><em>My Sister Jill is at the Melbourne Theatre Company until October 28.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-half-of-australians-will-experience-trauma-most-before-they-turn-17-we-need-to-talk-about-it-159801">More than half of Australians will experience trauma, most before they turn 17. We need to talk about it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214367/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Austin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>My Sister Jill disrupts ideas of colonial glory with a troubling depiction of family violence, PTSD, homophobia and the ruinous intergenerational impacts of patriarchal oppression on everyone.Sarah Austin, Lecturer in Theatre, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2145522023-09-28T05:05:12Z2023-09-28T05:05:12ZA journey of discovery and identity formation: The Dictionary of Lost Words makes its wonderful stage debut<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550806/original/file-20230928-23-jx07r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C5855%2C3880&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts/State Theatre Company of South Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Dictionary of Lost Words follows Esme as she navigates the patriarchal world of Victorian England. While her father and colleagues construct the Oxford English Dictionary, Esme begins to form her own dictionary – particularly the words spoken by women and the working class who have been excluded. </p>
<p>Along the way she is buffeted by the seismic events of the early 20th century in the suffrage movement and the first world war.</p>
<p>Verity Laughton’s stage adaptation of Pip Williams’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-the-dictionary-of-lost-words-by-pip-williams-132503">best-selling book</a> is a wonderful work.</p>
<p>We are introduced to a crusty world of dedicated male lexicologists who are gathered together in the shed, or “scriptorium”, of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Murray_(lexicographer)">Sir James Murray</a>, played with erudite Scottish enunciation by Chris Pitman. They valiantly set out to construct volumes of meaning for words from the letters of the alphabet – with a hint of empire-building about the enterprise.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-the-dictionary-of-lost-words-by-pip-williams-132503">Book review: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A brilliant innovation</h2>
<p>Tilda Cobham-Hervey makes a standout return to the stage carrying the central character of Esme. </p>
<p>We first see her as an ingénue child hiding under the large desk of the eminent lexicologists. Her direct address to the audience draws us into her perspective of what is occurring around her. </p>
<p>As she grows, her curiosity about the world deepens while her determination to be her own person strengthens, in spite of the limited opportunities for women. Cobham-Hervey navigates this journey of discovery and identity formation with a surety of purpose and endows Esme with a passion for words and their meaning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C0%2C6761%2C4521&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman reads a letter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C0%2C6761%2C4521&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tilda Cobham-Hervey makes a standout return to the stage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts/State Theatre Company of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a brilliant innovation from designer Jonathon Oxlade we see words handwritten and projected from a camera hidden within a lamp above the central desk. This also enables the cast to indicate the location and the passing of time at the beginning of each scene – always a challenge when moving across the many scenes a novel brings. Postcards from locations are projected on a curved back-screen that echoes the diorama and magic lantern popular at the time. </p>
<p>Below the screen are immense rows of pigeonholes where the slips of paper containing word meanings are filed. In a neat twist, these pigeonholes become letterboxes as Esme distributes pamphlets for the women’s movement when she is converted to the cause by the suffragette Tilda, given appropriate boldness by Angela Mahlatjie.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Projected postcards above blue-lit pigeonholes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jonathon Oxlade’s set echoes the diorama and magic lantern popular at the time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts/State Theatre Company of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lighting designer Trent Suidgeest sweeps diverse colours across the pigeonholes, also lit within, with the various hues accompanying the emotional arc of the play. </p>
<p>Composer Max Lyandvert adds fine and sensitive nuances to his score, which heightens the total theatre nature of the experience. A stylised version of Auld Lang Syne becomes a motif for the passing of those close to Esme, notably her father Harry, given dignity and depth by Brett Archer.</p>
<h2>A beautiful realisation</h2>
<p>Director Jessica Arthur handles the cast and use of video well. An inspired touch is having the ensemble move slowly behind key monologues and duologues, adding intricate detail. When Esme gives birth we see her mouth magnified by the live camera, in a close-up that amplifies the intensity of the birth.</p>
<p>Cobham-Hervey is supported by a fine ensemble who succinctly double up as required in Laughton’s economy of writing. Rachel Burke brings dynamism to Lizzie Lester, Esme’s “bondmaid”. Ksenja Logos doubles well between Esme’s supportive aunt and the rowdy and endearing market stallholder Mabel. </p>
<p>The market scene is one of the triumphs for the ensemble as it bustles with liveliness. The audience explodes with laughter as Esme discovers swear words though the indomitable Mabel. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a shawl and rags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ksenja Logos plays the rowdy and endearing market stallholder Mabel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts/State Theatre Company of South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the quieter second half, Raj Labade brings a warmth to Gareth, Esme’s suitor. Esme must first confess her dalliance with a former lover, Bill Taylor, played by Anthony Yangoyan with rakish charm. This is brilliantly shown by the ensemble as a flashback, where Esme has to make the agonising choice between keeping her illegitimate child, with the social consequences of the time, or giving her child away, with the accompanying grief that would follow. </p>
<p>As with Williams’ book, the play ends with an abrupt shift to 1989 and to Esme’s long-lost daughter who begins a speech with the Kaurna welcome “Niina marni”.</p>
<p>Williams’ intention is to highlight that the struggle for inclusivity continues, in particular for Indigenous languages. However, having spent so long with Esme, this feels like a rupture within the narrative – which indeed may be the purpose. </p>
<p>“Realised” might be defined as to give shape to an artform. This is a very clever realisation of Williams’ novel for the stage and gives great power to key moments of this epic story.</p>
<p><em>The Dictionary of Lost Words is at the State Theatre Company of South Australia until October 14, then at the Sydney Theatre Company from October 26 to December 16.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pip-williams-shows-how-world-war-i-transformed-womens-lives-in-a-new-novel-that-captures-the-poetic-materiality-of-books-199416">Pip Williams shows how World War I transformed women's lives, in a new novel that captures the 'poetic materiality' of books</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214552/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Fewster has worked with State Theatre Company of South Australia in co-ordinating the second year course State Theatre Masterclass at the University of South Australia.</span></em></p>Verity Laughton’s stage adaptation of Pip Williams’ best-selling book is a a very clever realisation.Russell Fewster, Lecturer in Performing Arts, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2119062023-09-11T03:18:33Z2023-09-11T03:18:33ZSydney Theatre Company’s new The Importance of Being Earnest: fresh, funny and completely joyous<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547377/original/file-20230911-23-ritc0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3233%2C2157&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is easy to forget that when Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was first written and performed in February 1895, Ibsen’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Doll%27s_House">A Doll’s House</a> was already 16 years old. Both plays, in different ways, expose the foundations of society (marriage; class; money; property) to searching critique. </p>
<p>Ibsen’s proto-modernism looks forward to a new century of realist scrutiny, as Nora slams the door on convention at the end of his play. But Wilde’s play looks backwards to older comedies of manners and aims for a similar effect by blowing their old, moral assumptions wide apart. </p>
<p>The Importance of Being Earnest is no less radical than A Doll’s House, but it is much more difficult to translate onto the 21st century stage without preserving it in aspic. Director Sarah Giles pulls the trick off with this new Sydney Theatre Company production. </p>
<p>It is fresh, funny and completely joyous. Wilde’s extraordinary script is delivered with sharp wit by an extraordinary cast and placed within a production that exploits the dialogue for its viciously comic potential.</p>
<h2>The price of privilege</h2>
<p>In one of very few changes, Giles has slightly expanded the roles of the servants in the play. In doing so, she has afforded us the pleasure of some beautifully comic moments from Sean O'Shea as Algie’s butler, Lane, and Gareth Davies as Merriman, servant to Jack. </p>
<p>More than this, however, the main action of the play now sits a little more uneasily alongside our awareness of the price of privilege. We are now conscious of the labour that has gone into the cucumber sandwiches and muffins, elsewhere launched as social weapons in the “Morning Rooms” and manicured gardens.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547378/original/file-20230911-23-andzop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: servants in a kitchen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547378/original/file-20230911-23-andzop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547378/original/file-20230911-23-andzop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547378/original/file-20230911-23-andzop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547378/original/file-20230911-23-andzop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547378/original/file-20230911-23-andzop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547378/original/file-20230911-23-andzop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547378/original/file-20230911-23-andzop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We are now conscious of the labour that has gone into the cucumber sandwiches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Helen Thomson’s Lady Bracknell is as brilliant as you’d expect from the phrase, “Helen Thomson’s Lady Bracknell”: imperious, monstrous, and utterly hilarious. </p>
<p>Some genuinely scene-stealing performances come from Megan Wilding as an exceptionally funny Gwendolen and Brandon McClelland as an exuberantly bumbling Jack. Charles Wu manifests Algie, the closest thing to Wilde’s voice in the play, with an elegantly light touch. Melissa Kahraman contributes an energetic and animated Cecily. </p>
<p>This latter performance, together with Wilding’s as Gwendolen, ensure the central act of the play is just as much a hire-wire act as the opening and closing. The middle part of the play focuses mainly on the female characters. When there is not enough attention paid to the casting and performance of Gwendolen and Cecily, it can drag a little. Not here, where their conversation over tea and cake becomes a battleground of wit and barely concealed violence.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547379/original/file-20230911-15-nvxokm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a young woman is served high tea." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547379/original/file-20230911-15-nvxokm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547379/original/file-20230911-15-nvxokm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547379/original/file-20230911-15-nvxokm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547379/original/file-20230911-15-nvxokm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547379/original/file-20230911-15-nvxokm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547379/original/file-20230911-15-nvxokm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547379/original/file-20230911-15-nvxokm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Melissa Kahraman contributes an energetic and animated Cecily.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The fascinating liar</h2>
<p>At the centre of Wilde’s play is, famously, “a handbag”. </p>
<p>Previous comedies of manners, such as Sheridan’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_for_Scandal">The School for Scandal</a>, and even Wilde’s own earlier play, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Woman_of_No_Importance">A Woman of No Importance</a>, always had secrets at the heart of them. Revealing those secrets confirmed society’s moral codes. The School for Scandal even has an adulterous woman hiding behind a screen for much of the action of the play. Her discovery leads to confessions of guilt, repentance and reconciliation. </p>
<p>Wilde’s genius lies in completely overturning the assumptions behind this comic structure while still using its recognisable format. In place of sin, we have a momentary lapse of concentration from a nanny and a misplaced piece of luggage. </p>
<p>Wilde is looking backwards and taking aim at the traditions that have produced his own society as hypocritical. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547380/original/file-20230911-15-dz1oto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: Helen Thomson in a pink dress." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547380/original/file-20230911-15-dz1oto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547380/original/file-20230911-15-dz1oto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547380/original/file-20230911-15-dz1oto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547380/original/file-20230911-15-dz1oto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547380/original/file-20230911-15-dz1oto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547380/original/file-20230911-15-dz1oto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547380/original/file-20230911-15-dz1oto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Helen Thomson’s Lady Bracknell is as brilliant as you’d expect.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In some of his other writing, he explained how this overturning of “truth-telling” could bring about a social and artistic revolution. His brilliant essay, <a href="http://virgil.org/dswo/courses/novel/wilde-lying.pdf">The Decay of Lying</a>, written four years before Earnest, lays out an improbable plan for the future: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance […] Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader, the cultured and fascinating liar. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As with society, so with Art which:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>breaking from the prison-house of realism, will run to greet him, and will kiss his false, beautiful lips, knowing that he alone is in possession of the great secret of all her manifestations, the secret that Truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-in-defence-of-beauty-in-art-89921">Friday essay: in defence of beauty in art</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Absurd fragility</h2>
<p>In making us slightly more aware of the social “truths” behind Victorian leisure, this production might have run the risk of undermining Wilde’s revolutionary celebration of the cultured and beautiful lie. What it pulls off, instead, is the Wildean effect of revelling in the pleasures of life’s surfaces while still being uncomfortably aware of their absurd fragility.</p>
<p>When the play made its way into print in 1899, four years after a triumphant London run, it did not have Wilde’s name attached to it. Wilde was in exile in Paris, his health destroyed by the two years of penal servitude he was <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/oscar-wilde-trial">sentenced</a> to for having sex with men. </p>
<p>This high-profile court case heralded a wave of legal homophobia that echoed through the 20th century. He died in 1900, with his (and our) futures crushed by a society over-keen on telling its own “truths”. </p>
<p>Go to this production and stay for its final moments in which one utterly charming piece of stage business hardly redresses the balance of the century of paranoid homophobia following Wilde’s arrest and imprisonment. But it does a very good job of laughing in its face.</p>
<p><em>The Importance of Being Earnest is at the Sydney Theatre Company until October 14.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/on-sexuality-the-law-still-caters-to-the-norms-of-public-disgust-79705">On sexuality, the law still caters to the norms of public disgust</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Griffiths does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Oscar Wilde’s extraordinary script is delivered with sharp wit by an extraordinary cast and placed within a production that exploits the dialogue for its viciously comic potential.Huw Griffiths, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2129652023-09-06T04:49:15Z2023-09-06T04:49:15Z‘An extremely serious musical comedy’ about Whitlam? Yes. The Dismissal is great fun, witty and sharply observed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546604/original/file-20230906-29-ehd2xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5078%2C3388&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Squabbalogic/David Hooley</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Whitlam government has a mythical status in the Australian popular imagination. While it lasted less than two full terms between December 1972 and November 1975, it has had an outsized cultural presence ever since. </p>
<p>This is not just because of Gough Whitlam’s transformative social democratic agenda, but because of the way his government ended: <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-gough-whitlams-dismissal-as-prime-minister-74148">the dismissal</a> remains one of the most shocking events in Australian political history. </p>
<p>Each year since, we have marked the anniversary with new stories, new angles, new details. The story has all the ingredients of high drama – indeed, the story was told in a rather ponderous television <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085006/">mini-series</a> in 1983. </p>
<p>So almost 50 years on, what to make of a comedic musical retelling of these tumultuous events? </p>
<p>The Dismissal’s talented creators (Jay James-Moody, Blake Erickson and Laura Murphy) are neither Boomers who watched the dismissal from ringside seats or dewy-eyed Gen-Xers, but younger still. </p>
<p>For their generation, forged in a neoliberal world much harsher than the one that lifted up their parents and grandparents, the Whitlam policy agenda of free education, free healthcare and social democracy for all might seem like a distant, unattainable dream. </p>
<p>Crucially, the authors also don’t see the dismissal as a unique event. In their program notes, they argue the show is</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the story of our political culture writ in bold, sung in harmony and danced in formation. Over, and over again. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So this show is not just a dramatisation of the events of 1975, it is also an attempt to understand our maddening political culture.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-gough-whitlams-dismissal-as-prime-minister-74148">Australian politics explainer: Gough Whitlam's dismissal as prime minister</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Self-referential and extremely funny</h2>
<p>Norman Gunston (a superb Matthew Whittet) guides the audience through the story and sets the tone for the show. We begin with the famous moment on the Parliament House steps. Playing Gough, Justin Smith both sounds and looks like him – no mean feat. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Matthew Whittet is superb as Norman Gunston.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Squabbalogic/David Hooley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Dismissal is least effective when it is striving for sincerity: the early number Maintain your Rage left me concerned the show might be too earnest to be genuinely funny. </p>
<p>However, my anxieties were assuaged by a very clever romp through the post-war years of Liberal rule (from Menzies to Holt to Gorton to McMahon), sung by suburban housewives and their lawn-mowing husbands. It is self-referential and extremely funny and sets a high bar for the rest of the show. Murphy’s lyrics are wonderful throughout, but they are especially brilliant here. </p>
<p>After Whitlam’s election, his policy achievements are dealt with in a rapid-fire slideshow, which moves things along but lowers the stakes in what follows. The real subject of the drama is the unravelling of the Whitlam government from within, thanks to the shenanigans of Jim Cairns, Rex Connor and <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/how-the-loans-scandal-became-an-affair-to-remember-20050101-gdzadn.html">the loans affair</a>, and the role played by Sir John Kerr, Malcolm Fraser and Sir Garfield Barwick in undermining him from the outside.</p>
<p>The cast are uniformly excellent. Peter Carroll is uproarious as a Mephistophelian Sir Garfield Barwick. Octavia Barron Martin manages to invest Sir John Kerr with a touch of pathos. Monique Sallé is a showstopping Tirath Khemlani, a befuddled Billy Snedden and her Queen Elizabeth II has more than a touch of Rocky Horror about her. Joe Kosky’s Jim Cairns is both pompous and ponderous, with brilliant comic timing. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546602/original/file-20230906-27-a4o8yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546602/original/file-20230906-27-a4o8yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546602/original/file-20230906-27-a4o8yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546602/original/file-20230906-27-a4o8yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546602/original/file-20230906-27-a4o8yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546602/original/file-20230906-27-a4o8yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546602/original/file-20230906-27-a4o8yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546602/original/file-20230906-27-a4o8yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Octavia Barron Martin invests Sir John Kerr with a touch of pathos and Peter Carroll is uproarious as Sir Garfield Barwick.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Squabbalogic/David Hooley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Andrew Cutcliffe’s Malcolm Fraser is stiletto-sharp and a little bit kinky. His Private School Boys is a bump-and-grind showstopper that recalls Alexander Downer’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CjCE0IsNWw">Freaky</a> from Casey Benetto’s 2005 musical Keating! </p>
<p>The song is reprised later by Lady Anne Kerr, whose purring refrain that “you’re not a match for private school girls” is a reminder that this is a story of class, mobility and social striving. </p>
<h2>Sharp, funny and astute</h2>
<p>The show’s gender-inclusive casting draws our attention to the almost all-male world of politics in the 1970s and gives many of the female performers the opportunity to behave disgracefully (Georgie Bolton as Rex Connor is spectacularly, hilariously crude). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546601/original/file-20230906-19-uzltpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546601/original/file-20230906-19-uzltpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546601/original/file-20230906-19-uzltpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546601/original/file-20230906-19-uzltpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546601/original/file-20230906-19-uzltpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546601/original/file-20230906-19-uzltpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546601/original/file-20230906-19-uzltpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546601/original/file-20230906-19-uzltpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Georgie Bolton as Rex Connor is spectacularly, hilariously crude.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Squabbalogic/David Hooley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Margaret Whitlam (Brittanie Shipway) and Junie Morosi (Shannen Alyce Quan) are voices of reason and resolve. While both are terrific, their roles in the narrative constrain their range: Margaret’s number Crash Through or Crash is an example of the ways the sincere songs don’t have the power to hold an audience in the ways that the satirical numbers do. Stacey Thomsett has much more fun with the role of Lady Kerr, who she depicts as Lady Macbeth in a Carla Zampatti suit.</p>
<p>It’s all great fun, witty and sharply observed. Yet perhaps the weakest part of the show is the ending. While we all know how this story ended, the creators didn’t seem to know how to draw their story to a close. </p>
<p>But overall, The Dismissal is sharp, funny and astute. It’s also a rare thing: an accomplished new Australian musical. I think Gough himself, with his love of Australian arts and culture, would have quite enjoyed it. </p>
<p><em>The Dismissal: An Extremely Serious Musical Comedy is at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, until October 21.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-new-australian-musicals-waiting-in-the-wings-79831">Where are the new Australian musicals? Waiting in the wings</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is currently a Fellow at the Whitlam Institute.</span></em></p>This new comedic musical is not just a dramatisation of the events of 1975, it is also an attempt to understand our maddening political culture.Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109322023-08-03T14:07:16Z2023-08-03T14:07:16ZRock Follies review: powerful new musical brings 1970s feminist TV sensation to the stage<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074049/">Rock Follies</a> was a groundbreaking television series about an all-female rock band that originally aired for two seasons in 1976 and 1977. It wove fantastical, trippy and campy rock-musical numbers together with the often less glamorous realities of show business. The television show also led to two soundtrack albums, Rock Follies and Rock Follies of ’77, that charted in the UK.</p>
<p>Now, nearly 50 years after it first aired, the show has been reimagined as a stage musical with a new book by Chloë Moss that showcases the TV show’s original music from Howard Schuman and <a href="https://www.andymackay.co.uk/">Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay</a>. </p>
<p>The Chichester Festival Theatre staging is a successful update for a contemporary live audience. It pays musical homage to the glam decadence of 1970s rock while simultaneously illustrating how far women still have to go in the ongoing struggle for equality. As political as it is fabulous, the new musical plainly shows how the patriarchy is not merely a relic of history. </p>
<h2>A strong staging</h2>
<p>The new production sounds fantastic, with strong performances by not only the Little Ladies – the name of the all-female band – but also the versatile and dynamic supporting cast.</p>
<p>Set designer Vicki Mortimer’s simple setting of stage platforms, lights and road trunks effectively transforms the Minerva Theatre studio into an intimate concert venue. The Little Ladies are backed by a live rock band whom I found myself wishing could jump over the barrier and rock out with the cast at several points during the show. </p>
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<p>Retaining the synth-heavy roots of the original show, this musical feels like a worthy addiction to the world of bombastic and flashy rock musicals like <a href="https://www.batoutofhellmusical.com/">Bat out of Hell</a> or <a href="https://www.rockofagesmusical.co.uk/">Rock of Ages</a>. </p>
<p>The show is packed with more than 30 musical numbers – standouts include Glenn Miller is Missing and The Things You Have To Do, sung by Kitty (a powerhouse Tamsin Carroll), the new American female manager of the Little Ladies. </p>
<p>But perhaps the most timely of the songs, Jubilee, is sung by the Little Ladies at a fundraising gala to protest the event’s corporate whitewashing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Take a bus and see the dole queues
Enjoy spectacular inflation<br>
You’ll be knocked out by our poverty<br>
Another British institution<br>
Like the Silver Jubilee.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These lyrics from 1977 echo newspaper headlines from last year, about a coronation celebration amid a cost of living crisis. Sound familiar? The writers have been able to make this story of 1970s female rock power strikingly contemporary as it tackles issues like sexism, racism and income inequality. </p>
<h2>Voices for change</h2>
<p>While much of the sexism faced by the original television trio was of its time, this new iteration of Rock Follies makes it clear that the patriarchal power structure faced by Q, Dee and Anna in the 1970s are still in place today. </p>
<p>Repeatedly objectified as mere sex objects or dismissed as unqualified, the three women navigate a landscape of obstacles when it comes to establishing their own voices in the music industry. They are as passionate about music as they are about finding their own way, despite the societal pressures at both home and the workplace that keep telling them to stop. </p>
<p>Anna (Carly Bawden), a drug-addicted middle-class Cambridge graduate, is a strong singer but a much better songwriter. When she dreams of performing rock music, her husband instead encourages her to work in an office. “You’d make a good secretary!” he tells her in a backhanded compliment. </p>
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<p>Dee (a fantastic Angela Marie Hurst), who lives in a commune with her boyfriend Spike, faces not only sexism but racism by a whole array of record industry executives who either dismiss her star power as “exotic”, or refuse to support a Black performer. And the charming Q (Zizi Strallen), who offers to do another soft-core porn film to financially support the band, is weighed down by a freeloading partner who only wants her when she is successful. </p>
<p>Each of the performances is strong and charismatic. All three of the Little Ladies also posses the lung power to do Howard Schuman and Andy Mackay’s music more than justice. At a time when celebrating girl power (albeit a more complex version) is back, with big hits like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hyper-femininity-can-be-subversive-and-empowering-just-ask-barbie-209623">Barbie film</a>, Rock Follies is a welcome fierce feminist addition to the UK’s theatre scene. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.cft.org.uk/events/rock-follies">Rock Follies</a> is on at Chichester Festival Theatre, till Saturday 26 August</em></p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erika Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Foot stomping songs and charismatic performances make the stage adaptation of the 1970s TV series a hit.Erika Hughes, Reader in Performance, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2097942023-08-03T02:27:24Z2023-08-03T02:27:24ZNew Aussie musical Bloom misses an opportunity to interrogate the gaps in aged care – and in our social fabric<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540921/original/file-20230802-26-b7ng1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C17%2C5742%2C3811&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/Melbourne Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bloom, the new Australian musical produced by the Melbourne Theatre Company, is proudly billed by the company as born and bred right here in Melbourne/Naarm. </p>
<p>Written by Tom Gleisner (of The Castle fame) with music by Katie Weston, the show follows the story of Rose (Evelyn Krape), who reluctantly arrives at Pine Grove Aged Care Home after being told she can no longer live alone. Finn (Slone Sudiro), a university student studying music, arrives on the same day as Rose as part of a scheme offering students board in exchange for domestic duties. </p>
<p>As both Rose and Finn settle into their new accommodation, we meet the eclectic residents of the home and two dedicated care staff. Gloria (Christina O'Neill) has “accidentally” worked at Pine Grove for eight years. Ruby (Vidya Makan) gave up her communications degree at uni for a job that allowed her to do something more meaningful. </p>
<p>Fault lines soon appear. The frugal and punitive manager of Pine Grove, Mrs MacIntyre (Anne Edmonds), puts profit before people. She refuses requests for outings, fresh food and psychosocial programs designed to improve the residents’ (or as Rose puts it, inmates) lives so she can meet a tight fiscal bottom line. </p>
<p>Each character wrestles with the poignant and relatable idea that there is a gap between who they were and who they have become. </p>
<p>This gap occurs across the spectrum of ageing. Ruby asks herself in song if “maybe it’s time”, contemplating leaving Pine Grove and commencing a masters degree in aged care. Resident Sal (Eddie Muliaumaseali’i) silently looks through old photos to connect with his past and the remnants of his past self. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a nursing home, and a teenager." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">University student Finn moves in as part of a scheme offering students board in exchange for domestic duties.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/Melbourne Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dismissing the rights of older Australians</h2>
<p>This question of aged care homes as for-profit entities was brought into <a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-government-needs-to-improve-rather-than-defend-its-poor-covid-aged-care-performance-144447">sharp focus</a> during the pandemic. The final report of a Royal Commission into Aged Care and Safety exposed the deep chasms in the sector. It <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-key-takeaways-from-the-aged-care-royal-commissions-final-report-156109">tabled 148 recommendations</a> to parliament in 2021 and has led to <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthony-albanese-offers-2-5-billion-plan-to-fix-crisis-in-aged-care-180419">significant legislative reform</a>. </p>
<p>The idea suggested at the core of Bloom – that student boarders in aged care homes may lead to significant innovation, intergenerational and reciprocal learning and subsequently improve the quality of life for our elders – is treated glibly and without much substance in the formulaic model of musical theatre. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/4-key-takeaways-from-the-aged-care-royal-commissions-final-report-156109">4 key takeaways from the aged care royal commission's final report</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>The story references ideas of the human rights of our elders to have agency to voice complaints, to be treated with respect, to have liberty of movement and the right to social participation. </p>
<p>Specifically, Rose tries to lead an insurrection of residents during an inspection of the facility and refuses pills that make her feel groggy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in orange sings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Instead of being heard and respected, the residents are treated as a problem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/Melbourne Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead of being heard and respected, she is treated as a problem. The suggestion by Mrs MacIntyre is that she is “having a little turn” during her complaints: a moment of insight into how easily we have dismissed the rights of older Australians to exercise choice and be heard on matters that impact them. </p>
<p>Here, Bloom provides an insight into the cruelty inherent in some aspects of the system, and the difference quality care and a good carer can make to someone’s life. </p>
<h2>Stark realities and missed opportunities</h2>
<p>Toward the end of the play, there is a scene where we watch Rose take her last few breaths in her small hospital bed, in a stark and all-too-familiar room. She is surrounded by Gloria, Ruby and Finn, who provide comfort in her final hours. </p>
<p>In the scene, Finn reflects that Ruby seems very comfortable with death. She responds that both her grandparents lived at her home and she was present when they died. </p>
<p>Ruby’s experience of multi-generational living arrangements that allow for care at home for the elderly is <a href="http://universaldesignaustralia.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/009_Ch2_Dufty_Jones-3.pdf">more common</a> in Australian families that include first- or second-generation migrants. </p>
<p>Finn reveals that when his mother died, he was considered too young to be at the hospital. </p>
<p>This scene at Rose’s bedside is a good representation of the missed opportunity in Bloom to starkly represent the realities of our aged care system and our dominant cultural approach to end-of-life care in this country. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chorus line." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is a missed opportunity to starkly represent the realities of our aged care system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/Melbourne Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Due to the intense staffing shortfall so sharply reflected in the royal commission, unless family were present, it is very possible Rose would have died alone. </p>
<p>I can’t help but imagine how seeing that uncomfortable reality on stage may have been a transformative theatrical moment, seared into the memories of the audience as they make choices about end-of-life and aged care for themselves and those they love. </p>
<p>Instead of tackling the systemic issues around aged care and end of life, Bloom wraps things neatly up in a bow, ending the musical by suggesting the death of Rose led to change at Pine Grove. An unqualified student will now work as a musical therapist and a nice manager has been found to lead the home into a new era. </p>
<p>There is a great track record of musical theatre successfully tackling overtly political material and revealing the gaps in our social fabric and problematising history and power (think of shows like Hamilton, Urinetown and Bran Nue Dae). </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Bloom seems too afraid of its own subject material to truly tackle these issues and reflect their realities back to us. </p>
<p><em>Bloom is at the Arts Centre Melbourne Playhouse for the Melbourne Theatre Company until August 26.</em></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-all-hope-for-a-good-death-but-many-aged-care-residents-are-denied-proper-end-of-life-care-156105">We all hope for a 'good death'. But many aged-care residents are denied proper end-of-life care</a>
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</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209794/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Austin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is a great track record of musical theatre tackling political material. Bloom seems too afraid of its own subject material to truly tackle the issues.Sarah Austin, Lecturer in Theatre, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2083662023-07-24T01:08:00Z2023-07-24T01:08:00ZI can’t imagine anybody would come out of On The Beach and not hold their loved ones just that little bit closer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538855/original/file-20230724-180959-7r5urp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C3223%2C2157&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: On The Beach, directed by Kip Williams.</em></p>
<p>When Nevil Shute wrote his 1957 novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-the-way-the-world-ends-nevil-shutes-on-the-beach-warned-us-of-nuclear-annihilation-its-still-a-hot-button-issue-209243">On the Beach</a>, the world was emerging from the devastation of the second world war to confront new fears. </p>
<p>Shute imagines a not-too-distant future in which a short nuclear war has destroyed life on much of the planet. It has left Australia briefly isolated, with the radioactive cloud slowly advancing towards its beaches. The characters in the novel are waiting out their inevitable deaths. </p>
<p>To adapt this novel in 2023 is to consider our own lives in parallel, as we walk bleary-eyed from the pandemic into a future of escalating global conflict and climate crisis. </p>
<p>Shute’s novel chillingly emphasises the persistence of a kind of stoic duty as an affirmation of the human in the face of overwhelming death. But playwright Tommy Murphy and director Kip Williams have produced something both more poignant and more life-affirming from the dry bones of the original.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-the-way-the-world-ends-nevil-shutes-on-the-beach-warned-us-of-nuclear-annihilation-its-still-a-hot-button-issue-209243">'This is the way the world ends': Nevil Shute's On the Beach warned us of nuclear annihilation. It's still a hot-button issue</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Passion for life</h2>
<p>In the first half of this new play for the Sydney Theatre Company, Murphy is able to excavate genuine wit and humour from Shute’s turgid prose, allowing us to care that these people make the right choices for themselves. The dialogue is warm and human. And our connection to the characters in the first half provides a platform for the devastating pathos of the second half. </p>
<p>I can’t have been the only person hopelessly failing to hold back tears as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVN1B-tUpgs">Max Richter soundtrack</a> played behind some astonishingly affecting tableaux in the closing moments of the play. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538857/original/file-20230724-221265-6lsvxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Actors backlit on a white stage, appearing as shadows on a beach." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538857/original/file-20230724-221265-6lsvxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538857/original/file-20230724-221265-6lsvxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538857/original/file-20230724-221265-6lsvxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538857/original/file-20230724-221265-6lsvxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538857/original/file-20230724-221265-6lsvxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538857/original/file-20230724-221265-6lsvxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538857/original/file-20230724-221265-6lsvxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This is an Australia isolated from the rest of the world in its dying days.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Shute famously thought of writing as a “<a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2007/june/1268876839/gideon-haigh/shute-messenger#mtr">pansy occupation</a>”, only deigning to write if the writing had utility. The novel comes as a conservative warning against complacency. </p>
<p>Australia’s sense of its isolation from global conflict is seen as a delusion against which readers are encouraged to reevaluate their commitment to a collective future. His sights are set as much on his country of birth, the United Kingdom, and what he saw as its disastrous turn towards socialism in the post-war period as they are on the naive utopianism he found in Australia, his adopted country.</p>
<p>In this 2023 adaptation, however, the story is invested with a sensual passion for life that moves well beyond Shute’s stern warnings and instead provides a celebration of sex, love, desire and embodied, animal life. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538858/original/file-20230724-202045-ga2m4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man and a woman embrace." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538858/original/file-20230724-202045-ga2m4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538858/original/file-20230724-202045-ga2m4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538858/original/file-20230724-202045-ga2m4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538858/original/file-20230724-202045-ga2m4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538858/original/file-20230724-202045-ga2m4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538858/original/file-20230724-202045-ga2m4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538858/original/file-20230724-202045-ga2m4f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The play is a celebration of sex, love, desire and embodied, animal life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Where Shute’s characters stoically refrain from sex, this production loves the human body and its capabilities. Regrets here are not for lives lived wrongly but for lost futures that both we and the characters can see reaching out in front of us, unattainable. The beauty of men’s bodies is, in particular, constantly held up by the production as a reminder to both characters and audience of life-affirming humanity. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/6-books-about-the-climate-crisis-that-offer-hope-182668">6 books about the climate crisis that offer hope</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Fragile lives</h2>
<p>Williams’ direction brilliantly brings out the possibilities of Murphy’s script, and the two local theatre makers are on absolutely top form. </p>
<p>The staging does not contain the complex screen-work of Williams’ recent novelistic adaptations <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-picture-of-dorian-grey-review-eryn-jean-norvill-stuns-in-all-26-roles-150165">Dorian Gray</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-production-to-satisfy-sydneys-darkest-imaginings-sydney-theatre-companys-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-185596">Jekyll and Hyde</a>, but it is still disarmingly gorgeous. Lighting from Damien Cooper and set design from Michael Hankin contribute to a cinematic experience that underscores the beauty the production draws out of our fragile lives.</p>
<p>Contessa Treffone gives a stand out performance as Moira, carrying much of the emotional weight of the play. The humour of the first half mostly comes from her warm and empathetic rendition of a young woman determined to drain the last drops from the champagne flute of life. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538859/original/file-20230724-180396-bvp2rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538859/original/file-20230724-180396-bvp2rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538859/original/file-20230724-180396-bvp2rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538859/original/file-20230724-180396-bvp2rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538859/original/file-20230724-180396-bvp2rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538859/original/file-20230724-180396-bvp2rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538859/original/file-20230724-180396-bvp2rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538859/original/file-20230724-180396-bvp2rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Contessa Treffone carries much of the emotional weight of the play.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Michelle Lim Davidson as Mary, a mother uncertain what to do with her baby daughter in the face of death, also provides a performance that moves from nimble wit to affecting anguish. Matthew Backer’s scientist, Dr John Osborne, provides some much-needed glue to the scenes set in the submarine that sets out from Melbourne, only to discover a world of lost hopes. </p>
<p>On The Beach is clear-eyed in its pessimistic outlook for our lives. But with rare and important generosity, a sense of inevitable doom is turned into an affirmation of life, love and into a re-commitment to the future. </p>
<p>I can’t imagine anybody would come out of the theatre and not hold their loved ones just that little bit closer. And perhaps they might also take a look around themselves to see all of this beauty we still, perhaps, have time to save. </p>
<p><em>On the Beach is at the Sydney Theatre Company until August 12.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Griffiths does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Sydney Theatre Company’s adaptation of the book is both more poignant and more life-affirming from the dry bones of the original.Huw Griffiths, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092172023-07-17T05:19:07Z2023-07-17T05:19:07ZThe ominous inevitability of Suzie Miller’s new play Jailbaby: often, our justice system has nothing to do with justice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537621/original/file-20230717-29-dx61m2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C23%2C3976%2C2634&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clare Hawley/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Jailbaby, directed by Andrea James, Griffin Theatre Company</em></p>
<p>Jailbaby – a new play by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/apr/27/suzie-miller-on-prima-facie-and-her-olivier-win-london-theatre-circles-see-australia-as-the-daggy-cousin">Suzie Miller</a> – takes a steely look at what happens to an 18-year-old when his life collides with a criminal justice system that is bad and getting worse.</p>
<p>Jailbaby follows the phenomenal success of <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-suzie-millers-prima-facie-theatre-finds-a-voice-of-reckoning-on-sexual-assault-and-the-law-117588">Prima Facie</a>, which scrutinised the law’s failure to protect female victims of sexual assault. Following its premiere at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company in 2019, Prima Facie had seasons in London and New York, winning best new play at the United Kingdom’s Olivier Awards.</p>
<p>A one-time lawyer with the Aboriginal Legal Service and Shopfront Youth Legal Centre, Miller’s plays venture into dark places few want to confront. </p>
<p>This new play focuses on jail rape, a crime that is <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26597645/">understudied, under scrutinised and underreported</a>. It takes place in an environment where seeking help or speaking up has the opposite of the intended effect. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-suzie-millers-prima-facie-theatre-finds-a-voice-of-reckoning-on-sexual-assault-and-the-law-117588">In Suzie Miller's Prima Facie, theatre finds a voice of reckoning on sexual assault and the law</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A life of struggle</h2>
<p>AJ is a wide-eyed teenager (compellingly played by Anthony Yangoyan). His mother (Lucia Mastrantone) is a recovering drug addict. His violent father disappeared long ago. They live in social housing. They struggle. </p>
<p>AJ has a long record of troubled behaviour, mostly property crimes, which has seen him spend time in juvenile detention. At 18, AJ is highly impressionable – even gullible – and under the thumb of some older, nastier criminals.</p>
<p>When he needs $500 to go on a soccer trip he thinks will transform his life, he chooses the wrong way to get it. </p>
<p>He imagines the “massive smart TV, MacBooks, iPad” he will stuff into a blue IKEA bag “like a Christmas stocking.”</p>
<p>“Ka-ching!” he thinks. </p>
<p>Of course, it doesn’t turn out like that.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537624/original/file-20230717-228004-8ysmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An actor in a green jumper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537624/original/file-20230717-228004-8ysmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537624/original/file-20230717-228004-8ysmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537624/original/file-20230717-228004-8ysmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537624/original/file-20230717-228004-8ysmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537624/original/file-20230717-228004-8ysmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537624/original/file-20230717-228004-8ysmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537624/original/file-20230717-228004-8ysmle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">AJ is compellingly played by Anthony Yangoyan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clare Hawley/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Imagined sacred space</h2>
<p>The courtroom of the public imagination is like the last sacred space in a secular society.</p>
<p>It is presided over by judges beyond the reach of criticism. People readily imagine a defendant’s case will be carefully considered; that everybody has a lawyer in a sharp suit who will make eloquent pleas and ask searching questions. </p>
<p>In reality, the lower courts are crowded and chaotic. A duty solicitor quoted in recent research paper <a href="https://www.uts.edu.au/research/law-health-justice/making-change/self-represented-litigants-family-law-proceedings-involving-allegations-about-family-violence">likened the civil courts to a “zoo”</a>. The criminal courts are worse. </p>
<p>Miller’s play rips right through this veil of illusion.</p>
<p>Despite his age, AJ fails to get bail. He is tried remotely via prison video link. The court appears as a tiny square on a computer screen.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537626/original/file-20230717-207908-f52ks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman with a manilla folder." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537626/original/file-20230717-207908-f52ks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537626/original/file-20230717-207908-f52ks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537626/original/file-20230717-207908-f52ks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537626/original/file-20230717-207908-f52ks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537626/original/file-20230717-207908-f52ks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537626/original/file-20230717-207908-f52ks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537626/original/file-20230717-207908-f52ks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People readily imagine a defendant’s case will be carefully considered. In reality, the lower courts are crowded and chaotic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clare Hawley/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>AJ’s lawyer (Mastrantone) tries. But she is already disassociating herself from what she knows will happen. Perhaps this is just the way that lawyers cope. </p>
<p>AJ still thinks, by some miracle, he’ll get off with a warning. His mind is on his upcoming football training session. He doesn’t think the court will take away his big chance to change his life. But, of course, they do. </p>
<p>And in jail, AJ loses everything.</p>
<h2>Incarceration in Australia</h2>
<p>The back cover of the <a href="https://www.currency.com.au/books/drama/jailbaby/">published script</a> says the play pinpoints “the exact moment when it all goes so, so wrong” for AJ. </p>
<p>But that moment happened long before he took the jersey or the iPhone. It happened long before AJ was born, when politicians decided locking up more – and younger – people made them popular. </p>
<p>Even as the rate of offending in Australia <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Vanishing_Criminal/RXgeEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">has dropped</a>, the prison rate has <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-prison-rates-are-up-but-crime-is-down-whats-going-on-170210">steadily climbed</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-prison-rates-are-up-but-crime-is-down-whats-going-on-170210">Australia's prison rates are up but crime is down. What's going on?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Australia incarcerates <a href="https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_population_rate?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All">a greater percentage of its population</a> than China, Guatemala or the United Kingdom. The United States leads the world in per capita incarceration, but Australia has more people incarcerated <a href="https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/pre-trial-detainees?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All">who have not been tried</a> or sentenced. </p>
<p>Children <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2023/01/the-fight-to-raise-australias-age-of-criminal-responsibility/">as young as ten are incarcerated</a> in some Australian jurisdictions. </p>
<p>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/black-lives-white-law">most incarcerated people in the world</a>.</p>
<p>Australian jails are brutalising. They ought to be a measure of last resort. But young people can be sent to jail simply because there are few <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/116631">diversionary programs</a> in regional, remote or rural areas, or because rehabilitation programs may be full.</p>
<p>And it happens in the dark, because newspapers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/oct/28/new-studies-suggest-continuing-decrease-in-court-reporting">seldom cover the lower courts</a>, unless a celebrity is on trial.</p>
<p>Lower court judgements are rarely published. On busy days, if you blink, you will miss it.</p>
<p>Some lawyers argue this protects the “privacy” of the accused. But when an 18-year-old like AJ is sent to adult jail, that kid has a lot more than “privacy” to worry about.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-social-determinants-of-justice-8-factors-that-increase-your-risk-of-imprisonment-203661">The social determinants of justice: 8 factors that increase your risk of imprisonment</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Ominous inevitability</h2>
<p>Jailbaby is a high impact theatrical work. It contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault by straight men against younger male prisoners. The level of detail written into these descriptions is risky, but this raw brutality is the play’s strength.</p>
<p>Like a lawyer explaining legal proceedings to a client in the courtroom, Miller tells the audience what is likely to happen to AJ at every stage. This foreknowledge is horrifying, because it makes the audience complicit in the action as it unfolds.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537625/original/file-20230717-210338-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A police line-up." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537625/original/file-20230717-210338-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537625/original/file-20230717-210338-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537625/original/file-20230717-210338-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537625/original/file-20230717-210338-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537625/original/file-20230717-210338-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537625/original/file-20230717-210338-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537625/original/file-20230717-210338-93bviy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three actors share 14 roles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clare Hawley/Griffin Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet, ultimately it doesn’t quite come together. One of the story strands is underdeveloped, and the middle-class characters (whose home AJ burgles) often feel like uncomfortable caricatures. </p>
<p>There are 14 roles shared between three actors, and perhaps this requires a level of dexterity that contributes to uneven performances. </p>
<p>An ominous inevitability ties the best parts of the play together. We are left with a gut-wrenching sense that, for kids like AJ, the justice system has nothing to do with justice.</p>
<p><em>Jailbaby is at Griffin Theatre Company, Sydney, until August 19.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><em>The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209217/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This new play by Suzie Miller, the one-time lawyer who wrote Prima Facie, ventures into dark places few want to confront.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media and Journalism, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2069292023-06-13T05:00:29Z2023-06-13T05:00:29ZA gothic, brilliant success: The Poison of Polygamy brings the first Chinese-Australian novel to the stage after 113 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531523/original/file-20230613-24-8tc4he.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C2%2C1894%2C1273&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Poison of Polygamy, directed by Courtney Stewart, La Boite and Sydney Theatre Company.</em></p>
<p>Early Chinese migrants to Australia believed in ghosts. </p>
<p>Hailing mostly from a handful of villages in China’s southern Guangdong province, these migrants were Cantonese peoples. For them, the undead had immense power – given the right circumstances. </p>
<p>It was beholden upon the living to manage the dead: bury them appropriately, return their bones to China, arrange for ancestor worship. </p>
<p><a href="https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2007/court-records-and-cultural-landscapes">Archives tell us</a> Chinese migrants in Australia feared the consequences if such rituals were neglected, even in the chaotic environmental mess of the Australian goldfields. </p>
<p>I’ve read <a href="https://twitter.com/SophieLoyWilson/status/1668471159380385792">court records</a> from this period in which Chinese witnesses recount “angry ghosts coming to strike them at night”.</p>
<p>The Poison of Polygamy begins with a ghost. The play directly addresses Australia’s Chinese ancestors, conjuring up the past while speaking directly to the present. </p>
<p>Issues of tyranny and servitude, oppression and resistance, violence and its afterlife are marshalled to speak to our modern souls. </p>
<p>What is the link between colonialism and environmental destruction? How do we tell the story of a group of people – themselves victims of European racism – who in turn were invaders of Indigenous land? </p>
<p>What do we do with a 19th-century Chinese-Australian morality tale which insists that Christian values, with all their concurrent conservative gender politics, will save us from moral dissolution?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-gold-mountain-review-a-compelling-murder-mystery-shines-light-on-early-australian-multiculturalism-169527">New Gold Mountain review: a compelling murder mystery shines light on early Australian multiculturalism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Chinese migration</h2>
<p>An evangelical Chinese Christian, The Preacher (an excellent Shan-Ree Tan), walks towards the audience through a sea of mist, his throat cut and clutching a Bible. He is righteous and here to save our souls. </p>
<p>The Preacher is especially forthright on the questions of polygamy, a common practice in 19th-century China, which took on a new life among overseas Chinese migrant communities. Many first wives were “<a href="https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/chinas-left-behind-wives">left behind</a>” in the village while their men took a second or third wife overseas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531524/original/file-20230613-22-cnyp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A priest and a woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531524/original/file-20230613-22-cnyp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531524/original/file-20230613-22-cnyp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531524/original/file-20230613-22-cnyp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531524/original/file-20230613-22-cnyp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531524/original/file-20230613-22-cnyp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531524/original/file-20230613-22-cnyp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531524/original/file-20230613-22-cnyp5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shan-Ree Tan is excellent as The Preacher.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The play’s hero (“and there is nothing heroic about him”, The Preacher dryly informs us) is Sleep-Sick (also played by Tan): an opium-addicted scrounger who mistreats his wife (Merlynn Tong) and is bundled off to the Australian goldfields by her cousin (Silvan Rus) due to his debt and social malignancy. </p>
<p>There, he befriends other Chinese migrants, eventually settling in Melbourne’s Chinatown. Their banter and debate encompass all the issues of the day: democracy, racial equality, capitalism, mateship, feminism and, of course, the scurvy of polygamy. </p>
<p>The Preacher will use Sleep-Sick’s misadventures as a warning to us all, until another equally righteous narrator – the servant girl or bond maiden Tsiu Hei (Kimie Tsukakoshi) – questions his right to tell her story.</p>
<h2>A lost classic</h2>
<p>The Poison of Polygamy was likely the first Chinese Australian novel. It was serialised in the Australian Chinese-language press, <a href="https://booksonthewall.com/blog/serial-novel-a-brief-history/">Charles Dickens-style</a>, from 1909-1910 in 53 instalments.</p>
<p>The author was a Chinese Christian, Wong Shee Ping. The son of gold-rush migrants, he drew on his own experience to write a book about life on the goldfields and in Melbourne.</p>
<p>Australia is lucky in two regards when it comes to the recovery of our Chinese past. We have one of the best-preserved Chinese-language presses in the West, and we have a leading bilingual historian in Mei-fen Kuo, who has been <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/product/making-chinese-australia/">working her way</a> through this massive archive over the past 15 years.</p>
<p>Australia’s booming Chinatowns serviced several newspapers from the 1890s to the 1940s, read by Chinese Australians throughout Australia and beyond.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531525/original/file-20230613-30-c47rc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three women." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531525/original/file-20230613-30-c47rc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531525/original/file-20230613-30-c47rc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531525/original/file-20230613-30-c47rc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531525/original/file-20230613-30-c47rc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531525/original/file-20230613-30-c47rc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531525/original/file-20230613-30-c47rc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531525/original/file-20230613-30-c47rc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Poison of Polygamy was originally published in the Chinese Times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
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<p>Prior to digitisation, much of this newsprint sat mildewed in Melbourne and Sydney’s Chinatowns. It took Mei-fen’s tenacity in 2006 to discover The Poison of Polygamy in the pages of the <a href="https://katebagnall.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/csds2014_14-2.pdf">Chinese Times</a>, which was published in Melbourne for a national readership.</p>
<p>The novel was translated by Ely Finch and <a href="https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/108833">published by Sydney University Press in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>Playwright Anchuli Felicia King read the novel and <a href="https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/magazine/2023/june/the-poison-of-polygamy-digital-program-note#artistic-directors-note">rightly saw it</a> as an “Australian classic” and a “lost piece of our cultural heritage”. She wanted to stage a production “which spoke directly to our ancestors”. </p>
<h2>A brilliant success</h2>
<p>The result is a gothic, brilliant success, darkly funny and subversively political. </p>
<p>“We made your unions, we built your democracy,” Tsiu Hei tells the audience at the end. “We are in your limestone, in your clay.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531526/original/file-20230613-23-dfjpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women on a bed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531526/original/file-20230613-23-dfjpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531526/original/file-20230613-23-dfjpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531526/original/file-20230613-23-dfjpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531526/original/file-20230613-23-dfjpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531526/original/file-20230613-23-dfjpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531526/original/file-20230613-23-dfjpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531526/original/file-20230613-23-dfjpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The play is darkly funny and subversively political.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
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<p>Under the direction of Courtney Stewart, clever staging using rolling red columns, muscular choreography and a startlingly effective lighting design (Ben Hughes) allow for transitions across space and time, creating a world where Europeans are on the margins of historical action in this country. </p>
<p>Australia’s Chinese heritage is wrestled from the grip of our Euro-centric past and – finally – told from the perspective of Chinese migrants themselves. </p>
<p>This is a triumphant reclamation of an Australia denied to us in monolingual readings of our history.</p>
<p><em>The Poison of Polygamy is at the Sydney Theatre Company until July 15.</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-lurid-orange-sauces-to-refined-regional-flavours-how-politics-helped-shape-chinese-food-in-australia-150283">From lurid orange sauces to refined, regional flavours: how politics helped shape Chinese food in Australia</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206929/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophie Loy-Wilson receives funding from the Australian Research Council </span></em></p>Adapted by playwright Anchuli Felicia King, this ‘Australian classic’ is darkly funny and subversively political.Sophie Loy-Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Australian History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.