Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 22, 7:30pm
Creative & Production Team
Yuwaalaray Playwright / Writer: Hannah Belanszky
Kalkadoon Director: Abbie-lee Lewis
Associate Director & Producer: Ryan Whitworth-Jones
Dramaturg: Jane FitzGerald; Co-Set & Costume Designer: Angela Doherty; Co-Set & Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney
Composer & Sound Designer: Michael Weir; Fight Director: Tim Dashwood
Production Manager: Harry Dowling / Abbey Pace
Stage Manager: Milly Grindrod; Producer: Hayden Tonazzi
Workshop Facilitator: George Kemp
Cast (2026 National Tour):
Talijah Blackman-Corowa
Maliyan Blair
Sam Harmon
Danny Howard
Yani wants to go to the Easter Show, Kai wants a sense of home, Shanika wants her Mum back, and Lachlan… well, he just wants his bowl of noodles. But when the justice system is all that stands between these young people and what they want, it raises an important question: how do young people grow when the system keeps cutting them down? This poetic, personal and unexpected production will leave you asking who’s really to blame.
https://www.atyp.com.au/productions/saplings
Main Youth Characters:
Yani: A young person who simply wants to experience and have fun at the Easter Show.
Lachlan: A teenager out on bail who is hungry and fixated on getting a simple bowl of noodles.
Shanika: A young girl dealing with the pain of missing her mother.
Kai: A character feeling profoundly lost and isolated by the world around them
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I must be honest and admit that, at age 85 and needing hearing aids, RAP is not my thing. Not because of what may be said, but because last night I could understand only an occasional word with everything being so rapidly spoken throughout the play.
According to ATYP, “Four talented young actors take on multiple roles in this poetic, personal, and unexpected production”, but I can find no record of which actors played which of the four main characters. I could understand ‘Shanika’ and, I think, ‘Lachlan’, but I think it was Kai, whose loud angry voice until the very last scene, was almost completely incomprehensible to me.
On the other hand, I could see and feel the frustrations of these children, apparently of a dysfunctional family, taking what they saw as opportunities, being jailed for petty thefts without help from self-interested lawyers – until their sister realises she must simply find her own way; while one brother finds symbolic purpose, particularly as a First Nations person, in working for growing native Australian trees and flowers; and finally coming together with his deeply angry brother, forming a sensible brotherhood in that very last scene.
I see the production as an original form, almost of dance-drama – where movement choreography, and sound through voice and recordings, is used to create the characters, and the meaning of the situation is played out in action.
For Canberrans and Queanbeyanites, I am reminded of the Canberra Dance Theatre and the work of Stephanie Burridge in the 1990s, in my feature article for The Canberra Times at https://frankmckone2.blogspot.com/1998/03/1998-feature-article-on-stephanie.html about her show Journey.
Australian Theatre for Young People has a long history of taking an original approach, exemplified once again to our benefit in Saplings.
