Thursday March 28, 2024
Yibiyung
Review

Yibiyung

September 18 2008

Yibiyung, Upstairs Belvoir St, September 18-October 26; phone (02) 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au. By Dallas Winmar, dramaturg Louise Gough; director Wesley Enoch, set design Jacob Nash, costume design Bruce McKinven, lighting design Niklas Pajanti, composer and sound design Steve Francis. Cast: Jada Alberts, Jimi Bani, Sibylla Budd, Annie Byron, Russell Dykstra, Roxanne McDonald, David Page, Melodie Reynolds and Miranda Tapsell.

DALLAS WINMAR got hold of her grandmother’s “native welfare” files through the Freedom of Information Act. In the file she discovered letters, telegrams and memos relating to a “half-caste” girl named Lily – the name foisted on the girl by the Moore River Settlement authorities. Her given name was actually Yibiyung and despite all efforts to scrub from her memory all details of her young self, of her mother, her birth place and her family, Yibiyung she remained.

Winmar’s quest to discover the truth about her grandmother’s origins and eventually to tell her story began when she accompanied the old lady on a visit to the site of a former Aboriginal settlement when Winmar was a child of six or seven (about the same age as her grandmother when she was removed from her family). The settlement was Moore River and Winmar’s memory of her grandmother’s tears as she stood in the midst of memories and ghosts stayed with her.

It is a terrible story of early 20th century Australia: when paler skinned children were taken from their Aboriginal families to save them from the degradation of indigenous life. The Stolen Generations were once denied and now denied by some – the correct way of looking at it is that it was done with good intent and was “for the best”. Unfortunately the supposed good intent caused unimaginable anguish and damage to so many mothers and children, in particular, that the after-effects are still being felt to this day.

This is the background of Winmar’s new play, Yibiyung. It is both its great strength and its corresponding weakness. Because this story matters so deeply to Winmar: because of the pain she witnessed and felt and because it is her grandmother whose life she is depicting, she wants to share it in its entirety. Every scene and word is precious to her and to the memory of the woman she is honouring. Unfortunately, this makes for a narrative that is literal, plodding, painstaking and now – post-Rabbit Proof Fence and half a dozen other similar stories – familiar and predictable.

Winmar wrote Aliwa! which was also staged at Belvoir St, in 2001. It was a much more dynamic and dramatically interesting experience while traversing much of the same territory. By comparison Yibiyung has the shape and form of a work which nobody has dared – through misplaced sensitivity or some kind of inverted racist PCness – to take to with a much needed blue pencil. The first half is way too long and takes a great deal of time to say very little. There is a good argument for condensing the hour and 15 minutes into a dynamic 10 minute prologue relating Yibiyung’s early life and removal to Moore River (sadly a story well known to virtually all likely Belvoir St audiences) before launching into territory less traveled.

In this instance that territory is Yibiyung’s life after Moore River when, as a young teenager, she was ordered by and packed off to a doctor and his wife in much the same way as they might have ordered goods from Bright & Hitchcocks. The relationship between the girl and her “employers” and their Aboriginal cook would be a gift to a writer more interested in dramatic satisfaction than personal catharsis; as would the girl’s relationship with later employers, a kindly farmer and his eccentrically ratty but also kindly wife. The play’s second half is much enlivened by these stories as well as the reappearance of Yibiyung’s childhood sweetheart Smiley, a gawky boy who has become a side show alley boxer since leaving Moore River.

Yibiyung

As Yibiyung, NIDA student Miranda Tapsell is on stage from go to whoa and puts in a remarkably assured performance. She is more limited by her character’s lack of (inner) journey than her own ability and is a likely star of the near future. The same goes for Jimi Bani, an exuberant, charming presence as the boy and man, Smiley. As Yibiyung’s uncle – a loving man who cares for his neice after the death in childbirth of her mother – David Page gives a sweet and sensitive performance. Jada Roberts, Melodie Reynolds and Roxanne McDonald take on several roles apiece and manage that with style and confidence.

Annie Byron and Russell Dykstra seem to be first choice, these days, when a production calls for a mean, twisted, heedless White person. That they do this kind of thing so well proves what good actors they are. And finally, Sibylla Budd is luminous and magnetic as a weirdly Miss Havisham-ish doctor’s wife. Quite why she is got up as a relic of the Edwardian era is not explained. Neither is her husband’s cut-away tailcoat (in the 1920s) unless it is supposed to signify her disassociation with the present and yearning for the past. Hard to say.

The set and lighting are serviceable: a largely empty stage but for a mysteriously under-used piano, a centerpiece camp fire and a big old dead tree; and the chalked stars on the back walls are a unifying and nice touch. Wesley Enoch’s direction keeps all the balls in the air – the large cast performing a multitude of roles – and draws as much from the performers and the script as is likely to be possible in the circumstances described above.

If cut and sharpened to, say, 100 minutes without a break and focused on Yibiyung’s teenage life, it would be a powerful and fresh experience for high school students, and the unconverted. Meanwhile, in the main it’s worthy rather than riveting and in the end the politics are dissipated by the personal. This is a pity because it’s not as if Australia has gone beyond paternalism and patronage when it comes to Aboriginal Australians: the NT intervention tells us that. As does the scheme to stop welfare payments if kids are truanting. The clear message is that it’s only black Australians who abuse or neglect their kids or allow them to wag school. It’s a prejudice that condemns many white kids to abuse and ill education. Now there’s an irony.

 

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