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| Andre Le - Kaitlin Nihill - Reza Momenzada - George Kanaan in "THIS ROUGH MAGIC" |
Written by
Helen Machalias – Directed by Beng Oh
Dramaturgy
by Dr. Rebecca Clode and Granaz Moussavi
Production
designed by Imogen Keen – Lighting Designed by Gerry Corcoran
Sound Design
by Kyle Sheedy.
Presented by
The Street at The Street Theatre, November 11th to 19th
November, 2023.
Premiere Performance on 11th November reviewed by BILL STEPHENS
This Rough Magic begins impressively with a storm
sequence depicting the plight of anxious passengers on a sinking ship. Not
surprising given that Helen Machalias had based her play on a tantalising concept
of telling the story of the Siev 221, 2010 Christmas Island boat disaster
through the prism of Shakespeare’s The
Tempest.
What was surprising
was that despite the care and attention obviously lavished on this production,
the realisation proved to be such a dense, almost unintelligible and ultimately
uninspiring, experience.
Perhaps a
clue lies in the playwrights notes in which she explains that “This Rough Magic has evolved to become a
genre-bending Shakespearean adaptation that is both a celebration of
Shakespeare and an act of rebellion against the canon. Iranian culture, Farsi language and Persian
myth and storytelling traditions are as prominent as the Shakespearean text,
offering a countervailing perspective on what we think of as ‘the classics’”.
Add to that
the director’s promise that “our production is Shakespeare inflected and
likewise our credo to evoke, not illustrate. From That starting point our
journey through the play has taken us through Christmas Island, accounts of
immigration detention, Persian culture, poetry, politics and more”.
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| George Kaanan - Lainie Hart - Kaitlin Nihill in "THIS ROUGH MAGIC" |
That’s a
tall order for five actors to cope with, let alone an audience, even an
inquiring one, and particularly for those not especially steeped in The Tempest, Iranian culture, Farsi
language and Persian myth.
In this
production, George Kanaan plays Prospero. Reza Momenzada is Ariel, Katlin
Nihill is Miranda, Andre Le plays Caliban and Lainie Hart plays a Dive Shop
Owner, an Immigration Official and joins with the others to represent various
named politicians and a chorus of hungry ghosts and refugees.
All work
hard, but given the peripatetic nature of the script, and the fusion of
Shakespearean declamation, naturalistic and accented languages, many of the
lines were hard to absorb and were therefore lost, and none of the cast were
able to demonstrate the range of vocal or acting technique necessary to create characters
able to engage interest or sympathy.
Imogen Keen
has devised a striking scaffold setting, but despite Gerry Corcoran’s clever lighting
design, and the evocative sound design by Kyle Sheedy, while affective for the
opening scene, it ultimately offered little sense of time or place elsewhere.
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| Kaitlin Nihill - Lainie Hart - George Kaanan - Reza Momensada - Andre Le - in "THIS ROUGH MAGIC" |
While Machalias’
initial concept of riffing on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” to express her concern about Australia’s treatment of
asylum seekers, seemed a seductive concept, it’s hard to escape the thought
that the development of her play suffered from “too many cooks”. The
contributions of many to its development, including two dramaturgs, two
cultural consultants and all the cast, are acknowledged in her program notes.
By trying to
address so many aspects of a complex problem at once, her prime message has
become obscured in a welter of unnecessary and confusing detail. Eliminating
the dross and sharpening the focus would not only improve the accessibility of the
play, but also increase the likelihood of its message reaching a wider
audience.
Images by Novel Photographic
This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au
