Reviews

Nakkiah Lui’s madcap satire begins with the promising premise of three well-educated, ambitious if marginalised Australians – an Aboriginal, Korean and a gay Tongan – trying to snatch power in the Senate by getting elected their own carefully selected bland white male.  

What would you do for your friend? Your mate? Your family? Blackrock asks these questions in Nick Enright’s 1990s play about male behaviours after a teenage girl is raped and killed. Unfortunately, Jack Cummin’s production doesn’t really help us with the answers.

It starts well, the brooding teenage figure of Jared (played by the director), sitting on a rock, looking out to sea. The language of Jared and his cousin defines the context for the next fifty minutes: this is a boiling pot of uncertain masculinity, where the boys rule, right?

In your face, in your head, ripping out your heart. That’s all in the first few minutes of this raw and visceral performance. Scott Wings delivers beautiful poetry of the body, in words and movement.

This is physical theatre of a different kind – a one-man journey inside himself: metaphorical, though sometimes it feels and looks and sounds quite literal.

Orpheus is the perfect example of how powerful words, story telling and music can be.

From a sunken garden in Adelaide, we were transported to a raucous night on the town with a group of lads, and from there we time-travelled backwards remembering our early, fragile and dream-filled childhoods, where the world was full of wonder and colour. It is a world that most of us lock up in a strongroom inside us until there is a moment, a wonderful moment, when the greyness of the everyday is transformed by love and the journey that takes us on.