LETTERS TO LINDY

By Diana Simmonds

September 4 2016

LETTERS TO LINDY, Merrigong Theatre Company production in association with Canberra Theatre Centre. Presented by Seymour Centre at the York Theatre, 2-10 September 2016. Photography: above Phillip Hinton, Glenn Hazeldine, Jeanette Cronin and Jane Phegan; right: Jeanette Cronin.

Thirty-six years ago (17 August 1980) a family of two parents, two young boys and a weeks-old baby girl were on holiday near Ayers Rock (Uluru) in the Northern Territory. They were staying at a camp site among other people like them: ordinary Australians having a bit of an Outback adventure. 

Within days the mother in this family would be notorious around the world as Lindy Chamberlain, who came running to the barbecue area from the family tent frantically shouting, “a dingo’s got my baby!” Eighteen months later, on 29 October 1982, she was convicted of the murder of her infant daughter and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Meanwhile, her five words had unleashed endless fascination, debate, speculation, admiration, hatred, jokes, prejudice and discrimination. And a lot of these feelings and responses are captured in the more than 20,000 “letters to Lindy” that make up a unique archive she lodged with the National Library in Canberra.

Playwright Alana Valentine has taken these letters and, as she gained Lindy’s trust, also the insights and responses of that one-time young mother and fashioned a powerful two hour (including interval) play. In it, for the first time, she tells the story by Lindy and from her perspective direct to the audience.

The play opens with Jeanette Cronin uncannily inhabiting young Lindy’s skin as she returns home from jail, having been released for the first time but years before it was all over. Surprising to many, perhaps, is the way Cronin captures the lightness and humour as well as the intelligence and dignity that so infuriated those who wanted to see Lindy condemned to hell for her crime. The crime, of course, was not murder so much as being different and not behaving as the women’s mags and popular media thought she should.

And from the moment the law and public opinion turned against her, Lindy was of course condemned to a kind of hell anyway: powerless to make anyone listen, ridiculed for her allegedly strange and un-maternal ways, pursued by a hostile media and the NT government and police. Then, having lost one baby in the most appalling circumstances, she was forced to give birth to her fourth child – a daughter – on temporary release from jail and under guard and endure having her taken away to foster parents. 

It beggars belief to this day that she was ever found guilty if, as some did back then, the “evidence” is re-examined, the motivation of her prosecutors is questioned and the story concocted by the mighty team of Sydney legal minds is considered coolly for even a few minutes. (Those lawyers have risen like scum in a bath tub and blithely gone on to make fortunes – but that’s another story.)

Directed with sensitivity and wit by Darren Yap, Cronin and the company of three supporting actors – Glenn Hazeldine, Jane Phegan and Phillip Hinton – bring to life the many varied voices and figures in the Chamberlain story over the years. It is surprisingly funny, often extremely confronting, very moving and always enthralling. 

Played out on a set (designer James Browne, lighting by Toby Knyvell) that resembles the memory of an ordinary home with sound and music occasionally breaking the silence of a rapt audience (Max Lambert and Roger Lock), Letters To Lindy is not only highly entertaining, but also an important contribution to the Australian story. It belongs on high school curricula and discussion groups where The Crucible is more often to be found. 

Not that the Miller play isn’t one of the greatest ever written, but Letters To Lindy has a resonance and relevance to this country, its recent history and attitudes and its deficient judicial and legal systems that should not be ignored. And the upcoming generation needs to know why.

That aside, what the play and any time spent listening to Lindy does, is to tell a story of human resilience, intelligence and rare wisdom in the face of outrageous injustice and cruelty. It’s not possible to feel anything but uplifted and inspired by the theatre work and the woman herself. 

As she observed to a young questioner on Saturday night: “your mind is the most precious piece of real estate in the world, don’t let anyone else take it over”. In other words: don’t harbour hate, anger, resentment or revenge – and then you won’t have to waste energy forgiving transgressions, you can get on with your life and live it to the full. Which is not to say that the pain and suffering she endured and continued to endure were and are not real, but they don’t govern her life. Amazing and highly recommended.