THE SEED (PERTH)

By VICTORIA LAURIE

November 12 2024

The Seed, Black Swan State Theatre Company. Subiaco Arts Centre, to 17 November 2024. Photography by Daniel J Grant

BY VICTORIA LAURIE

The reward for hanging around theatres for three decades is that you follow the talent trail from early promise to ripe realisation. It was an exciting time 27 years ago when young actors Kate Mulvany and Steve Turner played opposite each other in Tracy Letts’ play Killer Joe. The Southern Gothic black comedy was set in a caravan, where 19-year-old Mulvany, making her unforgettable debut, sat twisting Cheezels around her fingers as the clueless Dottie to Turner’s homicidal Joe.

Nearly three decades later, Turner has the leading role in Mulvany’s own play The Seed, only this time his acting partner is her younger sister Tegan Mulvany, making her Black Swan debut. Like Killer Joe, The Seed is a bleak comedy about family life gone off the rails, only the murderous bits lie more in the imagination than the actual plot. It is every bit as unpredictable. 

The Seed was initially a commission from Company B Belvoir in Sydney in 2004, first performed in Perth in 2009 and now restaged in a slightly reworked version. At the outset, it’s worth saying that Mulvany has embedded a real fact of her own childhood in this deep and marvellously rich fiction. The Seed, on one level, refers to her father’s Vietnam War Dioxin exposure which was the “seed” of her childhood cancer. Turner plays the role of Danny, a Vietnam veteran who laments how “we brought it back inside us.” On opening night in Perth, Mulvany acknowledged the ongoing fight to compensate victims of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange in Australia and South East Asia.

The play opens as Rose Maloney (Tegan Mulvany) accompanies her dad Danny to his hometown in England where, dictaphone poised, Rose intends to capture the family recollections of grandfather Brian (Geoff Kelso) and fill in blanks in her own life.

Danny is a nervy war veteran who still flinches at the sound of fireworks. His overbearing widowed father is an ex-IRA patriot who glories in his self-described violent acts against the British in Ireland. The threads of narrative spool back to Danny’s own childhood, three little boys pleading with God that Dad would return home safe, then Danny’s escape from casual family violence to Australia, and, now, his reluctant return to the family hearth.

In this aspect alone, Mulvany brilliantly explores the impact of violence and trauma transmitted like a virus, father to son, then to his offspring. The lies and mistruths are more like undetonated bombs waiting to go off – Brian’s false war hero stories, Danny’s made-up narrative about why his daughter suffered sickness, Rose’s compulsive petty pilfering.

The uneasy reunion of father, long-absent son and the grand/daughter is made edgier by the imminent arrival of Brian’s other sons, more a menace than reality. Brian’s lounge room hints at such uncertainties, with large cardboard boxes stacked behind sparse furniture. Set designer Zoe Atkinson adds an inspired detail – a few boxes are draped with lace doilies, like a provocation to peek inside.

The boxes also form a screen for evocative video (by Jessica Russell and Mark Haslam) of a heaving grey sea. Rose recalls her seaside upbringing and the precious fishing trips with dad Danny, bobbing about on the Indian Ocean and pulling crayfish pots – and the odd dead dog – from the water. Her terror at being cut by sharp craytails hints at a surfeit of pain. “I don’t want any more scars on me.”

As Danny, a brilliantly-focussed Turner brings hollow-eyed torment to the role; his father’s rejection haunts him. Tegan Mulvany’s Rose is raw, over-eager, and utterly credible. Veteran actor Geoff Kelso gives one of his best performances yet as the gruff, blarney-spinning Brian. 

Director Matt Edgerton has expertly paced this longish play – two hours plus interval – and kept the action concentrated mid-stage. Ultimately, the writer Kate Mulvany herself is the hero of the story.

As her alter ego, played by sister Tegan, says: “I am your biggest war wound, Dad. I am covered in your battle scars. Don’t tell me I’m not part of the story.”