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THE SECRET RIVER
Review

THE SECRET RIVER

January 25 2013

THE SECRET RIVER, Sydney Theatre Company at the Sydney Theatre, 12 January-9 February 2013. Photos by Heidrun Lohr. Main: Anita Hegh, Miranda Tapsell, Ethel-Anne Gundy and Ursula Yovich. Right: Nathaniel Dean and Rory Potter.

The Secret River rolls along like the Hawkesbury itself: mysterious, deep, deceptive and in its own languorous time. There is no hurrying it, no point resisting its gentle yet inexorable force and that quickly becomes spellbindingly obvious in the progression of the play. Although seen only as an occasional shimmer of light, the river is omnipresent throughout. The humans, living beside and on it, are constantly aware of it, and its indifference, and in their various ways, they demonstrate their awe and love for this great source of life and death and power. The two tribes - white and black - are in its thrall yet, as their story gradually unfolds, it becomes clear that they are also in thrall to one another; for good and ill.

The novel, by Kate Grenville, is already a modern classic, and this stage adaptation, by Andrew Bovell, is surely headed the same way. William Thornhill (Nathaniel Dean) was born a Thames waterman in the late 1800s but poverty and the casual barbarism of Georgian England send him half a world away to the penal colony of New South Wales. He is fortunate, nevertheless, because his wife Sal (Anita Hegh) accompanies him and the play opens with his pardon by Governor Macquarie and his dream of 100 acres on the river.

Sal's dream is to "go home" however and it's a powerful undercurrent in the interlinked stories of Aborigines and interlopers. Will yearns for a place of his own, for something to pass on to his sons, to be his own man. He knows he would be nothing and have nothing if he returned to the Thames and nostalgia for London plays no part in his plans for the future. He makes a pact with Sal - they'll stay five years - and he hopes she will grow to think of the Hawkesbury as home; but she starts each day like a prisoner by scoring its passing in the bark of a tree.

For the Aborigines, represented at first as the shadowy yet commanding presence of narrator and guide, Dhirrumbin (Ursula Yovich), the coming of the strangers is simply odd. They discuss the newcomers around the camp fire; there is laughter and amazement. Then, they merely step aside and silently watch, mystified by the whites' clodhopping and unskilled attempts to plant themselves in the land. What they are doing is beyond reason to the Dharug whose own relationship to food, land, life and being is so utterly different. 

Neither white nor black recognises what the other is doing - and there is unexpected although not surprising laughter for the audience at the comical aspects of the misapprehension between them. The audience too is privy to the mystery and alienation experienced by both through the bleedingly obvious yet astonishing decision to have the Aborigines speak in their own language - and not translate it or use subtitles.

Within minutes the audience is confronted by two fundamentals that propel and will finally derail the story and its characters: the concept of "home" and the fact of language and (mis)understanding. These are the foundations of the narrative and when each is gradually undermined and destroyed by suspicion and ignorance, the final outcome is inevitable and catastrophic. Before that happens however, the scene and lives are set out in ways that make these people vivid and all too understandable - from the point of view of each and every one on both sides. Laughter is part of the magic that makes it happen, but the alchemy is in the story and its dramatisation.

In bringing The Secret River to the stage Grenville and Bovell have been blessed by the creative team and cast assembled by STC for the world premiere production. Neil Armfield is a director who excels in realising epic drama that is also minutely human and personal in its focus. He did it with Cloudstreet and he succeeds again here with the close collaboration of artistic associate Stephen Page. Between them they orchestrate the human and emotional movement of the large company in a way that feels operatic in its haunting musicality. It's achieved partly through the poetry of the text and partly through Iain Grandage's score - played live by him from a piano and assorted bits and pieces at the side of the stage. He's also joined from time to time by members of the cast - including Trevor Jamieson on guitar.

The set designer Stephen Curtis, lighting designer Mark Howett and costume designer Tess Schofield are the production's visual lynchpins. The Sydney Theatre stage is bare but for a campfire that straddles cultures and time through its makings of part-massive tree trunk and part-rusted out 40 gallon petrol drum. While an oil can and plastic milk crate, used as seating, also suggest the modern detritus to be found on a river bank. Through subtle lighting changes the empty stage alternates between sandy river beach, sunlight reflecting rippling water, a roughly-dug corn patch, a shaded forest glade and the Thornhills' first crude attempt at a dwelling. Behind them looms the sandstone escarpment, always the same but ever-changing - blue-grey in the moonlight, bleached out by the midday sun, washed red and ochre by rain. 

THE SECRET RIVER

The newcomers wear the rough clothing of the op shop and the poor house - neither quaintly period nor shabby chic but simply shabby. The Dharug are more scantily clad but the ethos is the same. What is most striking is how Schofield has accentuated the racial colouring: the Dharug are smeared with charcoal, the whites with chalky white, their blackness and whiteness are exaggerated but somehow seem quite natural and unexceptional after a while.

Among the interlopers, however, are those whose motives and morals are not as foolishly innocent as those of the Thornhills. Smasher Sullivan (Jeremy Sims) is a man without a kind thought in his head and his face is painted red and white - a mask of evil - his every move and moment reek of menace. Loveday (Bruce Spence) is a philosopher-gentleman whose mind has been warped by the reality of New South Wales. And so it goes.

Watching these poor specimens is Yalamundi (Roy Gordon), the elder whose accumulated wisdom and dignity will not save his people from the inexplicable; somewhere in-between is the pipe-puffing old trout Mrs Herring (Judith McGrath), a settler who has come to an understanding and terms with the river and its inhabitants. And there's Thomas Blackwood (Colin Moody), a man familiar throughout the colonies and outposts of Empire: a decent man who has assimilated and minds his own business. But to his countrymen he's a disgrace - gone native, taken a black djin, become a white nigger. The descriptions are varied and all add up to the same thing: his own business will never be his own and the fear he generates through the apparent ease of his life will end in violence. 

The rays of hope and sunshine are, of course, the children. The Thornhills' youngest son makes friends with two Dharug boys and they play and learn from one another just as all kids do the world over. But the eldest son is already too steeped in the prejudices of the adults. He is a lonely figure, caught between the tribes and without a real place - yet - in either. Again, the story-telling and playing of these scenes make for laughter and tears. It's heartbreaking and beautiful to watch.

The company - including two sets of kids that rotate between performances - is uniformly fine and amalgamated into an extraordinary ensemble (including Ethel-Anne Gundy, Daniel Henshall, Rhimi Johnson Page, Matthew Sunderland and Miranda Tapsell) making the play and this production something to be savoured and enjoyed. The Secret River is a tragedy as grand and terrible as any in the English language, yet the humanity and passion that have gone into its making are wonderfully uplifting and inspiring. 

From the author to the playwright, to the commissioning artistic directors, to the cast as they stand - arm in arm - at the end there is an overwhelming sense of truth, honesty, hope and redemption. The Secret River is the essence of theatre.

 

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