The Colony, Centre for Australasian Theatre photo © CfAT/Savannah Productions |
An ambitious concoction of dance, live sound, film and spoken word, The Colony presents the last days of a group of lepers shipped to a nameless tropical island on the periphery of mainstream society. The text, by Sydney-based writer Graham Henderson, explores humanity’s big-ticket items—love, death and the influence on our lives of the natural world.
In the beginning things look promising. Patterns radiating on the slick wet stage suggest the comforting constancy of the tide. In the lighting design is all the sultriness of the tropics, shot through with overripe yellows and reds. A cast of gloriously dishevelled figures melt through their final days, led shambolically by a man called Hamlet, a chronic journal writer. He is cared for by the other inhabitants, including a minstrel, a ghost and a woman named Christmas, until the day he finds himself “in that baroque room at the end of time.”
The Colony, Centre for Australasian Theatre photo © CfAT/Savannah Productions |
Visually it is all quite stunning, yet when the performers speak and the action unfolds there is a disconnect between characters and dialogue and each other. No one seems to quite know what to do with themselves, or where they are going. There is a fair amount of moping and flinging about of bandages and from time to time someone dies. The character of Irina, a ghost, appears at times to be haunting a different show. More Elvira than White Lady, she delivers soundscape pitch perfect to the north, featuring both curlew cries and gecko chitchat, but it remains unclear what she means to Hamlet.
In a random dance segue (by choreographer Catherine Hassall), a kind of spaced-out, hippy groove sesh, everyone ends up on the floor. Even the ghost gets down with it, and it is a relief to learn that the characters have a sense of humour. Finally, albeit briefly, the audience has been let into the work. This is a show laden with meaningfullness; it’s just difficult to figure out which particular meaning to latch onto. The many ideas swim, wave and drown, each of them unresolved.
The Colony, Centre for Australasian Theatre photo © CfAT/Savannah Productions |
The signs were all pointing to something big, something breathtaking even, but somehow the parts didn’t add up to the whole. Yet I hope the makers of The Colony continue on their journey; big dreams are wonderful things and only by testing them out in reality may we truly see what is possible.
Centre for Australasian Theatre, The Colony, writer Graham Henderson, director Guillame ‘Willem’ Brugman, ART Ensemble: Warren Clements, Piers Freeman, Srianjali Gunasena, Catherine Hassall, Sue Hayes, Jeremiah Johnson, Miyako Masaki, Kara Ross, costumes Linda Jackson, sound Jeremiah Johnson, Nigel Pegrum, scenography Guy & Gina Allain with Mavis Ngallametta and Craig Koomeeta, film Savannah Productions; JUTE Theatre, Centre of Contemporary Arts, Cairns, Nov 16-23
This article originally appeared as part of RealTime's online e-dition Jan 30, 2013
Victoria Carless is a Cairns-based writer. Her play The Rainbow Dark will be published in Staging Asylum, Currency Press, 2013
RealTime issue #113 Feb-March 2013 pg. 31
© Victoria Carless; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]