REVIEW: Jane Harrison's STOLEN Is Presented With Powerful Simplicity By Sydney Theatre Company

Thursday 20th June 2024, 8pm, Wharf 1 Theatre Walsh Bay

Ian Michael’s (Director) presentation of STOLEN reminds the audience that Jane Harrison’s (Playwright) Kate Challis RAKA Award winning play retains a relevance in the 26 years after it premiered.  First presented in the aftermath of the “Bringing Them Home” Report, published by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in April 1997, the stories the effects of being forcibly removed from their families on children of indigenous descent plays out in an artful intertwining of stories.

Drawn from Harrison’s research into the experiences of indigenous people through workshops and interviews, STOLEN tells the story of five children that had different experiences after they were stolen from their families and put into government homes.  STOLEN seeks to represent the range of effects the trauma had, from the ‘lucky’ children put into homes that wanted to treat the children as their own, to others that ended up treated as free labor or outside of normal moral or legal behavior as they had no one to advocate for them.  It expresses the trauma responses that led to a feeling that nowhere was home and they’d always be on the run to desperation as the horrors of one generation were visited on the next.

With Jarron Andy, Mathew Cooper, Kartanya Maynard, Stephanie Somerville and Megan Wilding representing the children, the stories of Jimmy, Sandy, Ruby, Anne and Shirley are interwoven rather than be presented in any linear form.  Drawing on the idea that the stories are snippets of memories of their childhood and their maturing, designer Renee Mulder has transformed the Wharf 1 stage into a larger-than-life expression of the institutional space of the government home with an oversized bed and filing cabinet dominating a sparse stage with mounds of luggage able to be added where necessary.  Mulder’s costuming makes it clear that the adult actors are connecting to the children whose stories they are telling. 

With statistics still showing that Aboriginal children are still being removed from their homes and being put in “out-of-home-care”, with numbers greatly overrepresented compared to children of other backgrounds, STOLEN retains a relevance which also serves to make the moments of levity awkward with little feedback for comedic moments as the audience feel uncomfortable at laughing at the content even though the execution is on point.  These moments further reinforce that the non-indigenous community need to stand up and play their part in ensuring that history stops repeating itself. 

This compact but powerful 85 minutes of theatre is enlightening and engaging while being entertaining yet challenging the audience to consider their own actions or inactions on stopping history from repeating itself. 

https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2024/stolen