Walking into the Bigness.

Walking into the Bigness recounts stories from the life of Richard Frankland, the indigenous Australian singer-songwriter, poet, filmaker, activist and playwright.

While Mr Frankland and fellow musician Monica Weightman sit to the side of the stage providing subtle musical underscore, his stories and songs are brought to life by five actors, who alternately play Mr Frankland himself, or various other people with whom he comes into contact as the story requires. This approach lends a certain disjointedness to the proceedings, especially during moments of overlapping dialogue, which made it difficult to hear some of what was being said.

Played out against a strikingly designed, highly evocative set, the stories were far more than mere anecdotes – they were intensely personal pieces from a man’s life, encompassing the unusual breadth of Mr Frankland’s experiences, which ranged from his early days as an abbatoir worker to his time as an investigator for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, only to later abruptly turn to his overseas warzone experiences.

Offering a great deal of information for the audience to absorb, the storytelling structure seemed to falter a little in the second half – perhaps it was a case of trying to cover too much ground in the one production. The five performers – Tammy Anderson, Paul Ashcroft Luisa Hastings Edge, Rarriwuy Hick and Tiriki Onus – certainly gave their all, delivering high-intensity performances with plenty of energy, but were constrained in their contributions by the structure of the piece, with its focus on narrative recounting of Mr Frankland’s stories at the expense of greater interaction between the actors as individual characters. There were however several strong monologues which Paul Ashcroft and particularly Tiriki Onus built to powerful climaxes.

Mr Frankland and Ms Weightman took centre stage during the final moments, allowing Mr Frankland to introduce himself in the flesh and lead the company in a performance of his anthem Cry Freedom, giving a fittingly triumphant end to the performance. Walking into the Bigness offers an evocative glimpse into the indigenous Australian experience seen through the prism of a single life.

Alex Paige

Images: Richard Frankland & Rarriwuy Hick and Paul Ashcroft. Photographer: Pia Johnson.