Review: Giving Voice To A Part Of Australian Society Not Often Seen On Stage, AUSTRALIAN GRAFFITI Challenges The Prejudice Born Of Fear Of Change

Wednesday 12th July 2017, 7:30pm Wharf 2 Theatre Walsh Bay

Presenting a story of a part of the community not often seen on stage, Disapol Savetsila's AUSTRALIAN GRAFFITI, directed by Paige Rattray, seeks to challenge Sydney Theatre Company audiences to rethink their views of the new and unknown. In an environment where refugees and migrants are still treated with suspicion, this story of newcomers just trying to make a living holds an important message for how seemingly civilised people treat each other.

The premise of Savetsila's 90 minute play is that first generation Australian teenager Ben (Mason Phoumirath) has moved with his mother Baa (Gabrielle Chan), an immigrant from Thailand, to a small country town, inland from Sydney. Baa runs a Thai restaurant and has bought with her cook Loong (Srisacd Sacdpraseuth) and two other kitchen staff Boi (Kenneth Moraleda) and his wife Nam (Monica Sayers). Whilst Baa's life is solely focused on the restaurant which she has been recreating with each move inland in a hope to provide a future empire of restaurants for Ben, if only the competition or lack of customers would stop forcing them to keep moving, Ben manages to make a friends with the rebellious local girl Gabby (Airlie Dodds) who also happens to be the town police officer's daughter. Whilst the town has generally ignored the newcomers, not even trying the new restaurant, graffiti on the church wall in Thai writing turns the town against the outsiders with Gabby's father Ryan (Peter Kowitz) hurling accusations and the locals hurling rocks.

Designer David Fleisher takes the audience into the normally unseen side of the restaurant, a large sparsely furnished storeroom with fluorescent lights, stacks of spare chairs, a table and chairs and folding bed with pictures tacked to the wall beside it. Broken linoleum tiles cover the floor and the only natural light comes in through louvered windows, high on one wall. Sian James-Holland's lighting takes the audience from the implied paddocks and watering hole where Gabby is teaching Ben how to catch yabbies to the concrete box where Boi and Nam have begun to lose track of time aside from the indication of sunrise and sunset streaming in the window. Max Lyandvert's soundscape captures the fear the inhabitants of the restaurant are feeling as the situation keeps deteriorating.

As the central character, Phoumirath captures Ben's youth and inquisitiveness as well as his naiveite from having grown up in restaurants and never having the opportunity to have friends outside of the workers at the restaurant. Whilst expressing Ben's care and compassion, he also ensures that we see him as an average teenager as he rebels against his mother, failing to understand that she is only working so hard for his future.

More of the humour comes from Boi and Nam which Moraleda and Sayers present with a balance of levity and seriousness. Moraleda ensures Boi is seen as the more nostalgic of the pair whilst Nam appears more pragmatic in her understanding they can potentially do more for their daughter earning money in Australia and sending it back to Thailand. Chan ensures that Baa is initially seen as distant and stern, apparently only worried about the business and not her workers, or her son, allowing the truth of the motivation behind her determination to carry even more weight when considered against the racisim they keep experiencing. As Loong, Scdpraseuth captures the humour and wisdom of the recently deceased chef with fabulous physical humour and a gravitas that makes it believable that each member of the restaurant would turn to him for some form of guidance.

Dodds ensures that Gabby is initially seen as rebellious but both tired of the town she's grown up in, but also fiercely protective of it. There are hints that she wants to experience more of the world but is still so tightly tied to the town and the memories that she is unable to deal with. She ensures that Gabby's inner turmoil at wanting to protect her town but also wanting to believe that Ben didn't cause the damage is clear without being overplayed. As Gabby's father, policeman Ryan, Kowitz captures everything awful about Australian parochial prejudice as he finds joy in scaring the newcomers and attempting to intimidate them.

AUSTRALIAN GRAFFITI deals with some weighty and current issues but ensures that there is entertainment and humour to contrast the fear and hatred being directed at Ben and his 'family', as the Boi and Nam have become to Ben and Baa. The work is perhaps a little drawn out, particularly the ending which inexplicably sees Ben return after they've apparently fled the town. Additionally, there is a degree of stereotyping and caricature for all the characters, which is potentially chosen because of the director, or the key audience demographic but aside from those minor quibbles it is good to see Australian stories on stage that extend beyond the white, middle aged, middle class stories that so often grace stages across the country.

AUSTRALIAN GRAFFITI

7 July - 12 August 2017