Sunday, June 13, 2021

MILK by Dylan Van Den Berg

 

Dylan Van Den Berg - Katie Beckett - Roxane McDonald

Directed by Ginny Savage – Set and costumes designed by Imogen Keen

Lighting designed by Gerry Corcoran – Sound designed by Peter Bailey

Street Theatre, Canberra, 4 – 12th June 2021.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

Awarded the $30,000.00 Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting in the 2021 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Dylan Van Den Berg’s elegiac play, “Milk” tells the story of three ancestors who are brought together in a metaphysical memory place with the opportunity to share knowledge of their ancestry and ask the difficult questions of each other.

Originally slated for production in 2020, “Milk” has been in development by The Street through its First Seen program since 2018. Following an interruption to the process by Covid-19, this premiere production of “Milk” became The Street’s inaugural production for 2021, with direction intrusted to NIDA graduate, Ginny Savage, who was initially involved with its development as dramaturg.

The characters in “Milk” are simply listed in the program as Character’ A, B, and C. Roxanne McDonald plays A, an elderly aboriginal woman from 1840’s Flinders’ Island in Tasmania. Kylie Becket plays B; a sharp-tongued, middle-aged Tasmanian aboriginal woman from 1960’s perpetually trapped in the ritual of getting ready for a date. Dylan Van Den Berg, himself, plays C, a young Palawa man wrestling with the complexities of aligning himself with his indigenous legacies.

Dylan Van Den Berg - Roxanne McDonald -Katie Beckett


Apart from a couple of spot-lit soliloquies, the three characters occupy the stage for the duration of the play, which is presented without interval. A gorgeous environment of rocks, wood shavings and decaying church pews enhanced by Gerry  Corcoran’s artful lighting design suggesting mountain sunsets and sunrises, and Peter Bailey’s evocative soundscape with its soft bird-calls and distant digeridoos, conjures up a haunting atmosphere of timelessness in which the three characters attempt to reconcile what came before the onslaught of colonisation.

Of course there are no solutions, and some of the revelations are disturbing, but Van Den Berg’s thoughtful, questioning play is a worthy recipient of accolades it has so far received, and of this beautiful, haunting production by The Street.  

Roxanne McDonald - Katie Beckett

 

                                                    Images by CRESWICK COLLECTIVE


      This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au