Dry

Dry
By Catherine Fitzgerald. Far and Away Productions & Country Arts SA. In association with the State Theatre Company South Australia. Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide. Wednesday 17 to Saturday 10 November 2021

Catherine Fitzgerald’s Dry is ‘an absurdist dystopian Western inspired by the tough, resourceful women who live in our remote regions’. It tells the story of two sisters who have remained behind on an outback station when others have fled to either the far distant hills or the remote ‘Capital’. The reason for this population movement, which is affecting the entire country, is a lack of life-giving water. There is a telling line that was said by one of the departed – that ‘he didn’t want to be a refugee in his own country’. In a way this is the unbelievable but true dilemma facing the sisters. They also can’t face the fact that they may also need to be refugees in their own country. Instead, they prefer to stay at home and wait it out; wait for the rains that never come. Into their lives stumbles an African-Australian man who has escaped from the horrors of the ‘Capital’. Through sheer desperation the three embark down an abandoned rail track on a journey to survive. Far from being ‘absurdist’, considering the current climate crisis this situation is frightening real. The play demands we face the question – what would you do when there is no water?

Dry is the latest addition to the State Theatre Company South Australia’s 2021 season, that has included a few topical environmental plays, including Finegan Kruckemeyer’s Hibernation and Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day. Dry is very different – it has its own unique artistic truth that is constantly engaging, often very funny, moving and chilling. Its heightened style borders at times on satire; the satiric humour is needed to cope with this brutalist vision of a highly possible future. From the very beginning Dry resonates with the theatrical worlds of Samuel Beckett, particularly Waiting for Godot and Happy Days. The two sisters act like a comic female version of Estragon and Vladimir, waiting for the inevitable ending of a world without water.

The ’absurdist’ and satiric nature of Dry stands in dramatic and theatrical contrast to the harsh reality of the situation. The other highly successful theatrical contrast is the superb use of photographs by South Australian photographic artist Alex Frayne. Two highlights include the montage of abandoned towns displaying the wreckage and ruin of ‘Western’ materialism as the three characters travel down the rail track, and the final image of the two sisters huddled together under a majestic canopy of stars. The chilling irony of these stunning images is that even at its driest the Australian landscape, with all its harshness, is majestically beautiful. As the two sisters cling to each other at the end they merge with the constellation of stars, enveloped and embraced by ‘Mother Nature’. It is a truly stunning finale.

Catherine Fitzgerald has written and directed this little gem of a show. Her direction is meticulous and highly effective in balancing the various theatrical elements and influences at play, including the overall design and acting. The three actors, Eileen Darley, Caroline Mignone and Stephen Tongun are all terrific, shifting effortlessly from naturalism to heightened comic satire. In the midst of this nightmare there is an hilarious sequence when Caroline Mignone seductively feeds and massages the wide-eyed and bound-to-a-chair Stephen Tongun, watched by an incredulous and also chair-bound Eileen Darley. It is, however, in their respective monologues that the three actors truly shine, beautifully revealing the vulnerability and depth behind the satiric personas of these three highly individual characters.

Dry has already toured successfully through rural South Australia, playing in Roxy Downs, Whyalla and Port Augusta to packed houses. Now it has come to Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide, for a brief run of only five performances. I highly recommend you dash down and see this play before it finishes. It is well worth the trip; it is highly engaging and as well as provocative. Drawing more questions than answers, it makes up its own rules and artistic truth.

Tony Knight

Photographer: Alex Frayne

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