The Seed
The Seed, Belvoir St Theatre, February 20-March 30, 2008; phone: +61 2 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au
Memory is a funny thing and not necessarily always amusing. Kate Mulvany's remarkable play The Seed is essentially about memory: the tricks, lies and videotapes we carry in our heads about family, the past and our personal fairy stories.
In the case of Rose Maloney (Mulvany), an Australian journalist who travels to England to meet her Irish grandfather for the first time, the tape is real. In her pocket is a tiny recorder which she drags out the moment it looks like a memory is about to be conjured up or a story told.
Rose is accompanied on the journey by her father, Danny (Danny Adcock), a Vietnam conscript whose life subsequent to the war has been blighted by memories of that experience. When they reach the poor Nottingham terrace house and Granda’ Brian (Martin Vaughan) it is to gradually uncover the most common of family secrets: the memories that bear no resemblance whatever to the facts.
Mulvany's play was one of the success stories of B Sharp's program for the downstairs theatre in 2007 and in an initiative which is both sensible and overdue (in industry terms), Belvoir's artistic director Neil Armfield invited the entire production into the 2008 mainstage season with himself and handpicked senior practitioners acting as mentors. It meant that both the original cast and creative team (director Iain Sinclair, lighting designer Matt Cox, Steve Toulmin, sound designer and Micka Agosta, set design) had Armfield, Damien Cooper, Paul Charlier and Dale Ferguson, respectively, to advise and assist the transfer and transformation of a small play for a tiny space into a small play that ably occupies a large space.
Most new plays that achieve any kind of production are like shooting stars: a quick blaze and then they’re gone. The playwright learns bitter lessons about what went wrong and what was never right – without being able to fix a thing – and the work disappears into folk memory (or, more likely, oblivion). It short-changes all concerned, not least the audience.
This new initiative from Company B – not the last time it happens, you’d have to hope – has meant Mulvany was able to have another go at the elements of the original play that didn’t satisfy her and has also been able to undertake the work and thinking necessary to make a play in a vastly different environment. And her creative companions have had a similar experience, which can only be good and far-reaching for all concerned.
The resulting somewhat reworked play, The Seed, is one that – in one form or another, in one place or another and with this or any other equally good cast – should run and run. (Read our interview with Mulvany on StageNoise for more about the plot and various storylines.)
Meanwhile, because memory can play such tricks and because the idea of being able to compare the first production with this new one with any clarity or accuracy is nonsense, it is terrific to be able to report that this Seed is a moving and inspirational theatre experience in its own right. First time around it was by turns funny, tough, startling, tragic and finally: enough to lift your heart clean out of its moorings. It is no less so now and for those seeing it for the first time: a major treat is in store.
Despite familiarity of sorts (memory being the trickster that it is) this new production loses little of its original shock value in the unravelling relationships between the three members of the Maloney family. Rose is still an enigma, Granda’ is a mean old bastard; and Danny is the walking tragedy who symbolises one of the more shameful blots on successive Australian governments. As brought to life by the three fine actors in their newly-realised production, The Seed is as powerful this year as it was in 2007 and underlines the talent of its courageous creator, Kate Mulvany.
Read more about Kate Mulvany and The Seed
