Review: REMEMBERING PIRATES Is What Happens When Childhood Fantasy Meets A Grown Up World

Friday 23rd September 2016, 8pm, Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst

Australian writer Christopher Harley's REMEMBERING PIRATES explores a world where J.M. Barrie's characters have grown up and become the adults Peter Pan detested. Poignant, thrilling, terrifying and thought provoking, the latest offering from Darlinghurst Theatre Company will have your pulse racing and heart breaking as the Darling house is revisited decades after where Barrie left off.

The stage is set as a minimalist living room with a Scandinavian large ottoman and matching arm chair dominating the sparse room. A broad window with white sheers that let in the dappled street light billow gently between the two doors that flank the stage.

Director Iain Sinclair presents Harley's work with a high degree of truth and realism from husband Richard/Dick's (Stephen Multari) open dislike and lack of understanding towards his wife Wendy's (Emma Palmer) brother John (Simon London) and father (Robert Alexander), to her father's heart breaking dementia that has him still searching for his long lost son Michael. Sinclair weaves in John's internal turmoil and dialogue through use of Daniel Barber's lighting design to help differentiate the personal questions that come from The Shadows of our minds from the stark bright reality. Along with building the suspense, Katelyn Shaw's sound design incorporates the television and radio announcements that gradually reveal the event that has haunted the family for years and the pieces slowly start to fit.

As the grown up Wendy, Emma Palmer conveys the elder sister's maternal fussing over her brother and her father whilst retaining the cynicism and practicality that she had in youth when her younger brothers believed in the eternal child and wondrous other worlds filled with pirates and fairies. As the only one of her family to seemingly have it all together, Palmer conveys Wendy's frustration with her brother's lack of interest in finding a partner and his persistence on wanting to hold onto the past and the sadness of trying to care for her father that does not recognise her but freely acknowledges her brother.

Simon London presents John as the opposite to Wendy in his belief that the fantasies of his youth are real and that Peter Pan will bring back their younger brother Michael soon. London gives John the quietness and sensitivity that Wendy has lost, either by temperament or fatigue. Whilst Palmer's Wendy gets frustrated when her Father won't do things conventionally, London's John humours him as he understands the desire to hold on to possibility and hope. It's through John that the audience can still believe in Peter Pan, Pirates and the Lost Boys.

As Wendy's husband Richard, Stephen Multari creates a somewhat unlikeable character as he gets fed up with John and Wendy's father quickly, failing to understand their inner turmoil. He presents Richard as insensitive and self-centred as he supports the sale of the Darling family home which he and Wendy occupy, and repeatedly tells John that he is no longer welcome in their lives. Multari gives Richard a degree of depth as he eventually opens up and exposes a husband that doesn't know how to help his wife, thinking that the house and her family are the catalyst for her problems.

Robert Alexander, as John and Wendy's father, creates a heartbreaking character losing his mind to dementia and mental illness. His repetition and anxiety at wanting to go out and search for his missing child is palpable. The response to his visitors is confronting and honest in the extent that fixed ideas prevail regardless of the fact that it is Wendy who is the one that visits him the most.

REMEMBERING PIRATES is an engaging and heartbreaking thriller that puts a different twist on the classic children's story. This short work will have you guessing right to the end and change the way you see the stories we've been told as children.

REMEMBERING PIRATES

Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst

16 September - 16th October 2016