BWW Reviews: HOLY DAY (THE RED SEA) is a Frighteningly Real Look at the Worst Aspects of the European Settlement of Australia

Reviewed Saturday 5th October 2013

The latest offering from the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild is the multi-award winning Adelaide playwright and screenplay writer, Andrew Bovell's Holy Day (The Red Sea). He also wrote the screenplay for the film Strictly Ballroom, and his other successful plays include When the Rain Stopped Falling and Speaking in Tongues, which he adapted to become the film, Lantana. Holy Day was premiered by the State Theatre Company of South Australia in 2001, winning an Awgie Award the following year.

After the acknowledgement that we were on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, Auntie Josie Agius, a much loved and respected Kaurna Elder, began the evening by welcoming everybody to Country, firstly in her own language, and then in English. She followed up with a few humorous quips, then took her seat for a story that she would find very familiar.

The British colonisation of Australia encompassed many atrocities against the indigenous population, and taking the land as their own to divide, buy and sell, pushing the Aboriginal peoples off their traditional lands, was only the start. Almost every Aboriginal person in Tasmania was killed, and a great many more were murdered on the mainland. Apart from genocide there was the pain of the "stolen generation", when children were taken from there parents and brought up to be Christians, only to become servants to rich white folk, which left them open to all sorts of abuse. Bovell touches on much of this history that, until recently, has been glossed over.

Bovell's powerful script pulls no punches and does not play down the appalling acts committed by white settlers, nor does he water down the horrific traits of some of his characters, and there is no contrived happy ending. It is a challenging work that shows the desperate lives of those confronted by the harshness of the Australian interior, and the frustration of trying to live as they did in England, in such an alien place. Like the marooned boys in Golding's novel, The Lord of the Flies, the thin veneer of civilisation soon decays.

Director, John Graham, has assembled a fine cast and has brought out all of the darkness and brutality inherent in the script, keeping the tension high and drawing on the enormous conflicts that arise between the various characters.

Bovell takes us back to the mid 1800s and an isolaTEd White community, where most of the action takes place in a traveller's rest stop. The play opens, though, with a monologue in which a woman appeals to God. We then meet Nora Ryan, who runs the rest stop, and her "daughter", Obedience, an Aboriginal girl with a white father whom Nora stole from her true mother, having first got her drunk. Into this inn come three travellers, led by Nathaniel Goudry, an escaped convict. With him are Samuel Epstein, who does not have the nerve to stand up to Goudry, and the young Edward Cornelius, who is abused by Goudry, and never speaks.

The woman who gave the opening monologue arrives and we discover that she is Elizabeth Wilkes, the wife of the minister, who tells that the church at the mission has been burnt to the ground, her husband is missing, and her baby daughter has been taken, and she blames the local Aboriginal community. She says that she has seen Linda, a lone Aboriginal woman, hanging around near the mission and that she suspects that it is her that has taken the baby.

Elizabeth seems strangely unemotional, though, and her story of the events has some unusual aspects to it. Local landowner, Thomas Wakefield, is called in to help find Elizabeth's husband and baby, but he becomes suspicious and thinks that she is not telling everything that she knows.

Brant Eustice is superb as the overbearing, demanding, vicious, cruel, and thoroughly vile, Goudry, displaying malice against the world and everybody in it, in every moment. He makes his Goudry spread terror all around him, bullying, threatening, and even resorting to physical violence. Eustice has presented a good many top flight performances, and this would rank as one of his best.

Cate Rogers gives a great performance as the strong-willed and determined Nora, standing up to Goudry and protecting Obedience from his lust. She gives us exactly the pragmatist that Nora has to be to survive and prosper in such a setting. She makes it clear that Nora would be a fearful adversary when roused.

Carissa Lee is absolutely wonderful in a standout performance as Obedience, wary, head bowed, eyes cast down avoiding the gaze of the men, and carrying a great sadness in her eyes. She will tug at the heart strings as you see in her looks and demeanour all of the sense of loss, finding herself caught between two cultures and not really belonging to either. In a production of so many excellent performances, all of them memorable, hers will remain with me the longest.

Epstein is played by Matt Houston, who brings out the anguish that his character feels because he has never been able to face up to Goudry and try to stop his torment and abuse of Cornelius. He shows us his self-disgust at his few futile efforts to restrain Goudry, and a surge of inner strength as he tries to prevent Goudry from carrying out more of his wickedness.

The silent Cornelius is portrayed by newcomer, Robert Bell, in a moving performance in this difficult role, His power of non-verbal communication was remarkable with so much conveyed in his every move and look, showing clearly his hatred of and loathing for Goudry, the person, we discover, who murdered his parents and cut out his tongue to silence him.

As Thomas Wakefield, Steve Marvanek is every bit the wealthy and dependable landowner, pillar of what little society exists on this outer edge of European settlement. He gives his character a commanding presence, and takes charge as a matter of course in the search for the baby, the missing minister, and Linda. He presents a good reaction when he finds that he is unable to prevent the others from carrying out a raid on a nearby Aboriginal camp to massacre them in retaliation, albeit with no proof.

Fiona Lardner seems a little unsettled in the role of Elizabeth Wilkes, and perhaps the lack of blood on her clothes, and the very modern shoes, might have something to do with that. Costume and makeup can have a big effect on an actor. Lardner has it all there, the higher class of speech and good diction befitting the wife of a minister, the elocution that one would expect, but somehow it doesn't seem to be a full connection with the character yet. Perhaps a few extra runs will correct that. Elizabeth is supposed to be unemotional but Lardner makes her a little too remote and could allow a bit more emotion to surface at times.

Nicolle Orr is marvellous as the lone, wandering Linda, cast aside by the white man she had lived with and had children by, and dumped with the first group of Aboriginal people he encountered. They were not her people, so she left but could not return to her own people as she had lived with a white man and had a child. The weight of the world seems to rest on her shoulders and being accused of stealing and murdering a child is just one more burden. Orr gives us a character that tells of all of the suffering of the Aboriginal people since the arrival of European settlers and convicts. At one point Lina cries out and you will be amazed at what emotions Orr can put into that cry.

The set, by Normajeane Ohlsson, costumes, by Lisa Lukacs, sound design, by Paul Tossell, and lighting design, by Richard Parkhill, are intrically linked and add a great deal to the performance, with the thunder and lightening, the sound of the Australian bush, the different types of clothes for the different strata of what passes for society, the furniture at the inn, all giving the production as sense of time and place, as well as a sinister foreboding.

The Guild have received critical acclaim and awards for many of their productions, and this is yet another feather in the cap of this hard working company. It is definitely one to see this month.

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