THE SAPPHIRES

 

 

The Sapphires  Written by Tony Briggs

Directed by Tony Briggs. Musical Director Nathaniel Andrew. Choreographer Yolande Brown. Set and costume designer Richard Roberts. Lighting Designer Ben Hughes. Video Designer Craig Wilkinson.Sound Designer and Sound System Designer Isaac Ogilvie. Assistant Director Chenoa Deemal. Fight Choreographer NJ Price. Intimacy Coordinator Andrea Moor. Vocal Coach Naomi Andrew. Stage Manager Yanni Dubler. ASM Lialize du Plessis. SM Secondment Tara Kenn. Centre. A co-production of Queensland Theatre Company and the Canberra Theatre Centre. The Playhouse. Canberra Theatre Centre May 30-June. Bookings www.canberratheatrecentre.com.au

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

  

Director Wesley Enoch has struck gold with the Queensland Theatre Company’s touring production of Tony Briggs’ The Sapphires. An old TV set emits flickering black and white images that depict the setting of the production. Australia is going through enormous change. For the first time the original inhabitants of the land are acknowledged in a referendum that will lead to First Nations people finally being given the vote. Only sixty years ago! Australia has converted to decimal currency and Australian men are drafted to fight in Vietnam. It is against this background that four First Nations Yorta Yorta sisters from the Victorian country town of Cummeragunja are discovered by talent scout Dave Lovelace at a talent quest and persuaded to tour to Vietnam to entertain the troops. Tony Briggs’ endearing play, first produced by the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2004 explodes onto the stage in a co-production by the Queensland Theatre Company and Canberra Theatre Centre.  Since 2004 and the screening of the film, The Sapphires has captured the hearts of audiences everywhere. Moreover, it introduces audiences world wide to the culture that for 65,000 years has revealed its humanity through the power of storytelling and its connection to family, to country and to the endurance and survival of the human spirit. Where once the stories were handed down from generation to generation around a fire, Tony Briggs’ heartwarming account of his mother’s and aunts’ lives as The Sapphires dazzles in a production that employs the technology of our time while never losing the very soul of this uplifting tale. Designer Richard Roberts’ set and costume design, Ben Hughes’s lighting design, Craig Wilkinson’s expressive video design and Isaac Ogilvie’s sound design lift this newly minted version into the realm of the extraordinary. Visually the setting is awesome. The stage is lit to evoke the pulsating energy of the musical numbers and the moments of love or danger. The miking ups the ante shaking the foundations with the singers and the band with musical director Nathaniel Andrew on Guitar, Eli Badger on Bass and James Feagai on Keys. Numbers like Ain’t No Mountain High Enough reverberate with the force of amplification, passion and determination. It is the anthem of dreaming, sung with the force of resilience, survival and powerful confidence in self-belief. Queensland Theatre Company’s production of The Sapphires in collaboration with Canberra Theatre Centre is a stage spectacle for our time. It is a magnet to the story of four amazing First nations soul sisters at the very heart of this amazing piece of theatre. 

 

Aurora Liddle-Christie (Kay),Tehya Makani (Julie),Taeg Twist (Gail) Ruby Henaway (Cynthia) 

At its heart of course is the story’s soul, its spirit and its timeless truth. It is a truth revealed in Briggs’ recognizable and engaging script, based as it is on his family. It is in the performance of every member of the cast, skilfully guided by director Enoch to understand the truth in the playing of their characters. Every performance rings with authenticity and professional talent. The four McRae sisters are impeccably cast, each of their characters bonded by family and sisterhood but each an individual. There is Gail, the elder sister (Taeg Twist). She is the organizer, weighed down by a matriarch’s sense of the responsibility to control and protect her sisters. Kay (Aurora Liddle-Christie) is the reliable, responsible sister with the amazing voice. Christie channels Aretha Franklin’s I Say A Little Prayer, while making the song her own. Cynthia (Ruby Henaway) has an eye for the soldiers but it is Kay who finds love in the arms of  American army medic Robby(Cameron Leonard), while hanging upside down in a tree-entrapped parachute. Julie (Tehya Makani) is the vulnerable youngest member of the group. The moment she is lost and facing the racism and threat of the soldier in the darkness is a chilling reflection of the prejudice that still brings shame to the perpetrators of the scourge. 

 

Taeg Twist,Aurora Liddle-Christie,Ruby Henaway, Tehya Makani in The Sapphires

There are excellent performances from tour manager Jack Bannister as the well-meaning, but disorganized Dave Lovelance, immensely likeable in his mishaps and love for Gail. Garret Lyon gives a deliciously comic performance as Jimmy, who left Cynthia without a word after his proposal and found himself drafted into the army to serve in Vietnam. As Robby Cameron Leonard commands an imposing  physical presence with natural ease and conviction. Chris Nguyen gives a lively and mischievous performance as the opportunistic Vietnamese youth seeking whatever means he can to survive in war time. In telling contrast the scene in which he stands before a vacant block where his family and seven sisters lived but now lies completely bare and the family gone is heart wrenching and we see in Nguyen’s performance the tragedy of war for the Vietnamese people.  

This is the true power of Enoch’s direction. He and his cast and creatives have created a fully professional production with thrilling and exciting musical numbers, hilarious comedy at the Jimmy/Cynthia scenes or pathos at Julie’s predicament as she comes to terms with her condition and confronts the danger of a violent war. The Sapphires is the story of real experience. These are real people living out their authentic stories with which we can all identify, irrespective of race, colour or creed, and at its heart is the need for empathy and understanding. Queensland Theatre Company’s production ensures that we leave the theatre in a state of exhilaration and in the knowledge that we are all human. We love, we laugh and we cry. War may tear us apart but who we are, whether black or white, can bring us together. The Sapphires is loud (at times very loud), proud and proof that magnificent theatre can lift the human spirit. In The Playhouse and urged on by Dance Captain (Garret Lyon), a full throttled Finale, echoing with the company’s rendition of Aretha Franklin's Respect, fierily choreographed by Yolande Brown, brought audiences to their feet, clapping loudly and cheering wildly in a standing ovation that is the gift to a production of The Sapphires that must not be missed. 

 

This production is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Naomi Mayers OAM (1941-2026), an original member of The Sapphires, whose voice and strength helped bring this story to life