HIGHWAY OF LOST HEARTS

by Mary Anne Butler. Directed by Adam Deusien. Original live music by Smith and Jones. Lingua Franca. The Q Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. June 6-7.

This is one of those pieces that shines. Mary Anne Butler’s original play about a woman’s journey across Australia to lay some ghosts and settle her heart was performed by her in Darwin in 2912. This production adds rich original music performed live by duo Smith and Jones. It’s a mesmerising journey. 

Mot (Kate Smith) drives a van from Darwin to Sydney through the heart of the country, with only her dog for company. She’s on a quest to settle ghosts -  a dead father, the husband who left, the friend who died. She’s looking for her lost heart.

Smith holds this monologue together with humour and a compelling power. Mot’s journey through the middle of this country then the left hand turn towards Sydney and the coast, is caught in a narrative that includes roadside encounters, dodgy characters, the reality of racial prejudice and the tensions of being a woman travelling alone.  Smith’s performance brings out the deeper truths of the country. If you have travelled some of those roads or lived on them it will especially strike home.  

Backing Smith’s performance are duo Smith and Jones (Abby Smith and Sophie Jones) , with their sonorously beautiful songs another part of the evocation of place and feeling and country. 

Annemaree Dalziel’s moody set of towering drapes and scattered possessions is supported by sensitive lighting by Becky Russell, often appropriately more dark than light. 

Highway of Lost Hearts catches the history and nature of this place in a way that strikes at the deepest feelings, understandings, confusions and guilts you might’ve about this country. 

They are finishing a NSW tour on June 14-15 at Riverside in Parramatta. It would be great for them to take this show down that outback Australian road some time.

Alanna Maclean