Whitefella Yella Tree by Dylan Van Den Berg.
Directed by Declan Green and Andy Sole. Composer/sound designer Steve Toulmin. Designer Mason Browne. Associate composer and sound designer Daniel Herten. Lighting co-designers Kelsey Lee and Kaite Sfetkidis. Andrea James Dramaturg. Bayley Turner Intimacy coordinator. Tyler Fitzpatrick Stage Manager. The Space. Adelaide Festival Theatre Centre. Griffin Theatre Company. Adelaide Festival 2026
Actors Joseph Althouse and Danny Howard. Images by Brett Boardmann
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
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Danny Howard as Neddy. Joseph Althouse as Ty in Whitefella Yella Tree
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During the past several years I
have been fortunate enough to review a few of Palawa man Dylan Van Den Berg’s.
plays. Van Den Berg is one of the most significant and dynamic voices on the
Australian stage today. He writes with authority that commands attention, a
mind that compels us to consider the issues faced by indigenous people in our
country today and with a heart that evokes empathy and perhaps an undiscovered
understanding of First Nations People, their history, their culture and the
very special place they hold in this country’s history for over as many as
sixty thousand years. It is a legacy and a contribution that lies at the very
heart of Van Den Berg’s plays.
Two young aboriginal boys meet
under a lemon tree. Neddy (Danny Howard) is a young rumbustious larrikin, a
rough and tumble kid from the mountain mob. Ty is sensitive, uncertain and more
knowledgable about the ways of his river mob. The boys form a friendship, at
first playful and innocent but as the moons pass and the boys venture into
adolescence, their attraction grows and blossoms into love with the messiness,
awkwardness and surprise of that first cautious kiss. Van Den Berg gently makes
Whitefella Yellow Tree a tender story about queer love between two young
men from different mobs who discover in their love something deeper than the
inno0cent games of their childhood. The time
is at the beginning of the nineteenth century and their world is changing.
Across the river the threat of colonial invasion is becoming a reality and Van
Den Berg powerfully leads his characters into a world that is dangerously
destroying the age old culture and society of Neddy and Ty’s people.
It is not an unfamiliar story of
stolen land, stolen people, massacres and subjection to the gun. It is the
horrific reality of lost language, lost customs, lost pride and lost identity.
However, Whitefella Yellow Tree is not a chronicle of a past era. When we meet Ty
and Neddy, they are dressed in contemporary clothes. Their language is the
idiom of our time. Van Den Berg sets the play in early colonial times, but the costuming
and the dialogue are of our time. The past is no foreign country. It is the
signpost to present trauma, to
homophobia and racism. It is a stark reminder that humanity is universal,
whether black or white, straight or queer, rich or poor. It is a lesson learned
by Ty at the knee of his Auntie or by Neddy from the Elders of the tribe.
Suddenly the lemons fall with a
loud thud to the ground. It is a sour and bitter omen of the change that is
descending on their people. A loud
explosion in composer/ sound designer Steve Toulmin and associate Damien Kermen’s
sound design forecasts the peril that will force Ty and Neddy’s love apart. The
whitefella invades Danny’s mob, killing his people and stealing his sister and
he must leave Ty to rescue his sister. Moons pass and deep longing lingers,
locked in the lovers’ separation. The last time we see Danny, still seeking for
a sister he will never find is when he appears to warn Ty of the white man’s
approach. He is dressed in the period costume of a soldier, or white man’s
policeman. It is the final irony, the ultimate degradation of assimilation. In
Van Den Berg’s heartbreaking depiction of cultural and social erosion, the
wonderfully free and playfully mischievous young Neddy is diminished to a
servant of the oppressive Master, stripped of identity, though still hopeful
that his subjugation to the white man and their ways may lead to his sister’s
rescue. Ty too is the diseased victim of the white man’s inhumanity, awating an
undignified death.
Co-directors Declan Greene and
Amy Sole fully understand Van Den Berg’s symbolism and metaphor in a work
richly laid with allusory imagery. Co-lighting designers Kelsey Lee and Kaite Sfetkidis
shift the mood swiftly on Mason Browne’s set. The lemon tree hangs as a symbol
of the white man’s threat at times blasting light, dropping fruit and glowing
ominously or simply suspended as the ever-present symbol of the fateful destiny
of two young aboriginal men who innocently fell in love. Theirs is a tragic
tale of a cruel past that echoes still through the attitudes and actions of our
time.
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As Neddy and Ty, Althouse and Howard give flawless performances. We are enraptured by their childhood
innocence, moved profoundly by their emerging love and horrified by their cruel
fate. The final image of Neddy bent over the dying Ty to protect him from the
inevitable violence of the approaching white men is a heartbreaking reminder of
deeds still not requited and justice not fulfilled. Their performances make it
impossible for an audience not to be moved if not to tears then to a deeper
understanding of playwright Van Den Berg’s plea for understanding and
compassion.
Van Den Berg is the playwright we need more than ever following the fate of the Voice and I urge everyone to see any one if not all of this amazing playwright’s works.
