Bracken Moor: Australian Premiere for Adelaide

Through painstaking research and successful collaborations with international playwrights Adelaide’s Independent Theatre has brought some memorable Australian premieres to the South Australian community theatre scene over the years, including John Logan’s Peter and Alice this year.

With Bracken Moor, their final 2014 production, the company is poised to do it again. Not only is Independent’s Bracken Moor an Australian premiere, it is also only the second time the play has been performed anywhere in the world. The play premiered as a joint production between Shared Experience Theatre and the Tricycle Theatre in June last year, in London.

Independent Theatre Creative Director Rob Croser and the company’s designer, David Roach met with the play’s British writer Alexi Kaye Campbell in London early in 2014. The playwright was extremely supportive of the Independent Theatre production and has made himself available for ongoing discussions during the rehearsal period.

Bracken Moor is set in Yorkshire in 1939 during a mining crisis. It tells the story of Harold Pritchard, his family and their oldest friends. A wealthy mine owner who intends to close mines and lay off miners, Pritchard is challenged in this when ghostly possession, a past tragedy and family secrets disrupt his plans.

The play will resonate on several levels; as a psychological thriller, a ghost story, as an exploration of loss and grief and even as a statement about how we treat our environment and our fellow humans.

Alexi Kaye Campbell came to playwriting in 2000, after a successful career as an actor working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shared Experience Theatre. His first play, The Pride, brought him immediate acclaim and was followed successfully by Apologia and his 2011 play, The Faith Machine.

When asked why he wanted to tell the story at the heart of Bracken Moor Campbell said, ‘The image I had was of a child who had died in terrible way. I don’t know why that was; you never really know where these thoughts and ideas come from. I had also read a book about the 1930’s and I was very interested in the similarities between that era and our present day. And I wanted to write something slightly heightened and a period piece allowed me to do that. The script is on the cusp of naturalism, just a little more poetical.’

Alexi Kaye Campbell describes some of the notable parallels between the thirties and the present day as economic, for example the depression of the thirties and the recent economic hard times in Britain and elsewhere.

‘In both instances,’ he says, ‘the response has been a more rigorous questioning of the system….Today we are living through the internet age and while no one would deny that the technological revolution has had huge benefits, it has also made whole professions redundant.’

Campbell said the need to step back and re-evaluate notions of progress is a key theme in Bracken Moor.

Directed by Rob Croser and designed by David Roach, Independent Theatre’s production of Bracken Moor has a stellar cast, including Brant Eustice, Alicia Zorkovic, Michael Eustice, Will Cox, Lyn Wilson, Angus Henderson and David Roach.

Reviews for Bracken Moor’s premiere in London were uniformly excellent, including:

‘Beautifully crafted…thrilling theatre…intellectually as well as emotionally Haunting’-The Stage.

Variety described Bracken Moor as ‘a cross between a thunderingly old-fashioned family drama and an unnerving ghost story,’ which is surely testament enough that once again, Independent Theatre is on an audience-pleasing winner with the company’s final show for 2014.

Lesley Reed

WHEN: November 14, 15, 19, 20, 21 and 22 at 7.30 pm. November 16 at 4pm and November 22 at 2pm. November 18 at 6.30 pm.

VENUE: Odeon Theatre, Queen Street, Norwood.

TICKETS: Adults $35, Concession $30, Students $18.

BOOKINGS: www.independenttheatre.org.au  or visit www.bass.net.au

Images: Rehearsal photos of Will Cox, facing and Brant Eustice, Brant Eustice, and Will Cox and Alicia Zorkovic. Playwright: Alexi Kaye Campbell.

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