CRIBBIE

CRIBBIE has more heart than other stage plays with music. It is real: about life and destruction of a suburb of Brisbane without warning. There is no protagonist. This play is about a community, isolated, disenfranchised, parodied by the media. Proud, close-knit community, Cribb Island was shattered by the news that the entire town was going to be resumed to accommodate an extended landing strip for international planes at Brisbane airport.

Cribbie developed after the Great War (WW1) at the end of the road alongside the Brisbane River. It became Brisbane’s earliest Moreton Bay Beach. It attracted poor people with dreams and enterprise who took up cheap lease seaside blocks where they could build rough beach shacks, often from free pine slabs from crates in which new cars were delivered. Building regulations meant nothing at Cribbie. They became fishermen or dealers in sea shell and beach worms (fish bait).

Everyone was poor but all developed a close village community. “If anyone had something, we all had something,” became their slogan. Cribbie thrived: two churches, community hall for dances and functions, State School, and a basic shopping centre.  

Culture developed from which three Cribbie dancers progressed all the way to the Borovansky Company; and the Gibbs brothers grew up there, testing their juvenile talents against the locals.

Four brilliant actors: Louise Brehmer, Sandro Collarelli, Kevin Hides and Erin Murphy stay true to this third version, and still enthrall their public.

All praise to creators, Margery and Michael Forde, and the technicians. Be prepared for laughter, smiles and tears.

Jay McKee