Do Not Go Gentle

It takes a while to be fully on board Patricia Cornelius’ play as she follows the icy tracks of Robert Scott and his doomed team trudging to the South Pole in 1911.

By the second act, after Scott arrives there beaten by the Norwegian explorer Amundsen, Do Not Go Gentle is an articulate, compelling and beautiful exploration of the challenges, regrets and stubborn dreams of old age.  

Cornelius’ genius metaphor is in her team of four geriatric explorers, full of doubts, aches and confusions as they follow Philip Quast’s blundering if heroic pace as Scott.  It’s such an accomplished cast, with veterans Peter Carroll, idealistic but now always grizzling, and John Gaden as Oates, locked down and haunted by a lost son. 

Vanessa Downing is gloriously funny as the hockey-sticks optimist Wilson, who – in her female form – discovers with Scott that lust and love can come late in life.  Brigid Zengeni by contrast avoids all talk of life and love. 

Wandering across Charles Davis’ impressive glacier setting buffeted by snow are also illusory figures: Josh McConville’s near naked Man Beast (later revealed as Oates son lost to Vietnam) and Maria, a European émigré who has lost her country. An unresolved character, Maria is still well-conjured by the opera soprano Marilyn Richardson, who may be 87 but also sings so charismatically amongst the the ice of impending death.

Paige Rattray’s direction through the absurdism and wildest of nature is artful, even sublime, although early scenes on the trek are oddly exclamatory and static.  Reality out there may be getting very odd, but Paige’s cast are well-supported by Davis’ super realistic Antarctic wear, and his white set expressively lit and coloured by Paul Jackson’s lighting, and punctuated by James Brown stirring sound, both jarring and swooning. 

Stay with this play for its ultimately rich tale of life’s traps and possibilities. But most of all, go and experience it.

Martin Portus

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Photographer: Prudence Upton