The Jungle and the Sea

Following his applauded Sri Lankan epic, Counting and Cracking, S. Shakthidharan returns again to his birth country and rejoins Belvoir’s Eamon Flack to co-direct this co-written, brilliant work. 

The Jungle and the Sea unfolds against the last decade of the 26 year old civil war between the Sinhalese government and Tamil Tigers in the north, and the torturous recovery and reconciliation which still continues (along now with Sri Lanka’s economic and political  bankruptcy).

Written with most of the eight skilled Sri Lankan performers in mind, it’s about a prosperous but community-centred Tamil family driven by bombing to wander the roads, the two young men forcefully recruited to opposing sides, and the father blinded and a refugee in Sydney.  

Shakthi’s own mother, Anandavalli, an acclaimed bharatanatyam dancer, magnificently plays the matriarch, Gowrie, who covers her eyes until in life or death her family is reunited. And so she and two daughters tramp the escape to nowhere, across a vitally appropriate revolve, which never fully stops in Dale Ferguson’s set of minimal props and two bullet racked walls. 

When lines are drawn in the sand, we see how war is a matter of individual responsibility and heroism, as these people fight to maintain dignity and hope.   The creators understandably focus on this and not the frequent incidence of bloody violence is understandably the focus. This may be tactful to its Sri Lankan audience but theatrically it weakens these climatic, if dreaded moments. 

As Shakthi credits, his epic reaches to the mighty inspirations of the Mahabharata and Sophocles’ Antigone, and no more so than when at gunpoint one daughter still insists on performing funeral rites for her dead brother.

This echo to universal themes is well-served by the ongoing, stirring Canartic music from Indu Balachandran on veena and Arjunan Puveendran on percussion. And there are also heaps of realistic moments of family joy, banter and ceremony, and other odd characters on the road.

It’s a three-hour, two interval journey which would be well sharpened by a good trim.  

But the commitment and truth of the actors carries us through: Prakash Belawadi as the father and the Catholic priest; Emma Harvie as his “atheist lesbian” daughter also in Sydney; Nadie Kammallaweera and the fiery Kalieaswari Srinivasan as the two other daughters; Rajan Velu as a sweetheart to one until lost to the government army; Biman Wimalaratne as the brother lost to the Tigers; and Jacob Rajan as the compromised government official.

It’s an emotional and picaresque epic well worth joining.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Don Arnold