Brink Productions. Adelaide Festival Centre. Space Theatre. Preview. 3 Jul 2024

 

Living alone by the beach. Living for the surf. Sounds so idyllic. Trouble free.

Living with yourself by the beach as escape. Refuge from the ‘real’ world. From what’s in your head and a trail of life disasters. Not so pristine or utopian.

 

Chris Pitman’s many surf adventures brought him into contact with such recluses. Exposed him to the symbiotic connection with the sea they had in place of human society. He wrote Shore Break.

 

Shore Break is a brazen, raw, harsh, broken glass savage yet intensely poetic text. The story of one such shore breaker, under Director Chelsea Griffith’s deft pacing of the text, allows Pitman’s solo character to seemingly become three individual’s stories in one.

 

Griffith’s production is a straight-up, bare-bones affair in every respect. Susan Grey Gardener’s lighting is unchanging, sea and sun yellow. The set is nothing more than a square straw mat, a surfboard, deck chair, yellow coke crate with tradie jacket draped over it, and a surfboard leg rope. There is nowhere to hide. No stage tricks.

 

How is a shore breaker made?

Pitman offers one who starts being bit of a character. A great wit with no head for school. One who rebuffs praise. Lived a semi happy working class family life with a dad who took him to the beach. Once there it really begins.

At each struggle, cruising the channel of a huge wave offers redemption. Deep diving to the sea floor offers escape. While real world life gets worse. The shore is fast becoming the home nowhere else is.

 

This character’s life tales are told backwards in a manner offering a dual sense of deep regret for a life’s horrors spiralling out of control and of the growing hope the shore constantly offers.

 

This reverse-life structure is key to Pitman and Director Griffiths ability to segment this shore breaker’s life in a manner which makes each segment seem an autonomous life moment of another individual.

 

This also pushes Pitman as an actor to the height of his game. He finds nuance, subtle and brazen, in giving life to an accidental misfit’s moments, recognising life is at that too-late point in relationships, in social interaction, in mythical surf ‘work’ life.

 

Pain is as deep and sharp as regret is soft in soulful acceptance.

There is only the shore.

 

David O’Brien

 

When: 3 to 8 Sep

Where: Space Theatre

Bookings: ticketek.com.au