State Theatre Company. Space Theatre. 3 Aug 2016
Over the last couple of years during this centenary of World War I, we have had the opportunity to ponder on the woeful and astonishing project of Australians at war. The more personal the narrative, the more emotionally charged it has been for me. I won't soon forget the exhibition of primitive prosthetics in the Spirit of ANZAC Centenary Experience that was in Adelaide last March, or the morsels of sacrifice and pain written on the ridges and in the gullies of the Gallipoli battlefield. In State Theatre's The Red Cross Letters, another fascinating facet is revealed. The State Library of South Australia has a collection of over 8,000 packets of inquiries by loved ones as to the health or even whereabouts of their soldiers overseas, and replies from the relevant state branch of the Australian Red Cross Information Bureau. Most of the stories are South Australian, and the ringing of local towns and suburbs of Adelaide in the correspondence brought a faraway and long ago war to the here and now. The library entrusted local playwright Verity Laughton with twenty packets and she has incorporated eleven of these lives in this show.
It would be a stony heart indeed unmoved by this poignant material. A man drowns in the sea off Egypt saving other soldiers it's unlikely he even knew. Four brothers sign up to the same battalion; three are killed in France within hours of each other, how the fourth soldiered on to be wounded six months later is testimony to fortitude and courage beyond belief. But it is the desperation of those at home, pathetically yearning for scraps of information from the tyranny of distance, only to be drip-fed information over months or a year, that is most heart-rendering. And the replies, made with great patience by the bureaucracy in an attempt to be personal, had to be repeated not in 20 packets, or 8,000 packets, but for the more than 200,000 Australian casualties of that war.
The dramatic danger of the raw material is numbing the audience. Director Andy Packer's world premiere production looked no more sophisticated than a high school experimental effort that produced nothing new. The cast - comprising Matt Crook, Lizzy Falkland, Elizabeth Hay and Rory Walker - worked hard with about a dozen chairs, most unusually standing on them for some variety, and sometimes deftly maneuvering them like puppet masters. But there was not enough of the latter. Deliveries of the text were too often shrill - which was unattractive at length, and sometimes mechanistic with insufficient warming naturalism. I feel the letters need more help than Packer and Laughton provided.
More context would have enriched the experience. The portraits of the diggers was good, but the map of the Mid-North - thoughtfully centred on the home of one of Australia's most noted WWI veterans, Sir Hubert Wilkins, at Mt Bryan - was closer to what's needed. An association of the names of the sacrificed with their local town monuments, or the location of their demise in the theatre of war, were missed opportunities. And while showing a packet of sorts to the front row was good for the front row, the rest of us might have benefited from screen projections of some of the correspondence. I was often uncertain whose voice I was hearing. Matthew Gregan's haunting composition and live performance greatly enhanced the experience.
While I believe the raw material might have been better dealt with, it was a great and necessary project for these letters to be presented on stage with such reverential care, and you can't possibly leave this show the way you came in.
David Grybowski
When: 3 to 20 Aug
Where: Space Theatre 3-6 August, then on South Australian tour 8-20 August
Bookings: bass.net.au
