WALTZING THE WILARRA - HIT Productions at the Q. Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre.

Jalen Sutcliffe - Clancy Enchelmaier - Lorinda May Merrypor in "Waltzing the Wilarra"

 

Written and Composed by David Milroy – Directed by Brittanie Shipway

Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. 15^th & 16^th August 2025

Opening night performance on August 15^th reviewed by BILL STEPHENS 

Hanna Underwood - Leonard Mickelo & Company in "Waltzing the Wilarra".

When premiered as part of the Perth International Arts Festival in February 2011,  Waltzing the Wilarra was hailed as a landmark production. 

An original Australian musical play, written and composed by David Milroy, the first act of Waltzing the Wilarra is set in a mix-race dance club in post-World War 11 Perth, at a time when curfews, and the fear of being arrested for consorting, were always present.

Clancy Enchelmaier & Lorinda May Merrypor in "Waltzing the Wilarra"

The action centres around the relationship between half-sisters Elsa (Lorinda May Merrypor ) and Fay (Juliette Coates), who were brought up by kindly indigenous elder Mrs Cray (Lisa Maza).

Elsa, an Indigenous child of the stolen generation, is resentful of the attention Mrs Cray lavishes on Fay, who is white.  Fay has a crush on Charlie Runaway (Shaka Cook) a young Indigenous man who is best friends with Elsa’s husband Jack (Clancy Enchelmaier), a drunken white ex-soldier. 

However, Charlie is in love with Elsa and rejects Fay’s advances. Following a brawl at the club, Jack and Charlie are carted off to gaol. Later it is revealed that Jack has been killed although, how, remains a mystery.  

The second act is set in the same club 40 years later, when the club is now slated for demolition. Elsa, Fay, Charlie join others at the club for a reunion hosted by Athena (Hannah Underwood) which soon descends into recriminations during which dark secrets are revealed.

Sutcliffe - Hannah Underwood - Shaka Cook in "Waltzing the Wilarra"

Whatever charm the original production may have had appears to have evaporated in this production directed with a heavy hand by Brittanie Shipway, who has her cast portray the characters so broadly that it is difficult to engage with any of them.

Without the benefit of a printed program, and with pre-publicity that suggested that the show was a three-hander about characters Charlie, Elsa and Fay, most of the audience were surprised to discover that this production involved a relatively large cast of 8 actors and 2 musicians.

The hardworking cast struggled to bring life to a set of stock characters in a show that attempts to address complicated racial issues by clothing them in a warm glow of nostalgia.

In addition to the artists already named, Jalen Sutcliffe played Mr. Mack, and Leonard Mickelo played Old Toss, Sandy Barr and a detective.

There are 16 original songs featured in the show, mostly to provide atmosphere rather than advance the storyline, but no information is available about the two musicians who provide the accompaniment, or the creatives responsible for the setting, costumes, choreography, lighting or sound.  

The Company of "Waltzing the Wilarra".



Photos by Matthew Chen


This review first published in the digital edition of CITY NEWS on 16th August 2025.

 

  

WALTZING THE WILARRA

 

 

Waltzing The Wilarra. Written and composed by David Milroy.  

Directed by Brittany Shipway. Original Perth production directed by Wesley Enoch with set design by Jacob Nash and lighting by Trent Suidgeest. Produced by Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company. Touring production staged by HIT Productions. Q Theatre. August 15-16 2025. Bookings: 62856290. , theq.net.au

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

Touring the country’s regional towns with a show can be a tricky business. Last night HIT Production’s Waltzing The Wilarra bumped in to The Q Theatre for two days and three performances only before bumping out and heading off to its next venue in an exhaustive nation-wide itinerary. The company is to be commended on bringing theatre that deals with important issues to Australia’s regions and HIT Productions has an enviable record of touring well staged and well-acted productions of Australian works that deal with issues  pertinent to an Australian community. Waltzing The Wilarra is no exception to the high production values that Christine Harris has demanded of her casts and creatives. However, with so little time to get the technical side of the production working well, and the sound levels of the miking especially, the performance can fall short.

But it is not this alone that made last night’s show less satisfying than it deserved to be. Writer and composer David Milroy has attempted to crowd his play with a potpourri of song and music, vaudeville satire and drama, so that the power of the drama becomes interrupted by the introduction of different conventions. The drama of the piece is not without impact. Wilarra is an outback country town in Western Australia where black and white residents live in relative harmony and come together to their club for entertainment. Jack is a returned and damaged soldier from the war. He is an alcoholic and married to Elsa, a victim of the Stolen Generation. Charlie is also a member of the Stolen Generation but keeps this chapter of his life to himself. He and Jack are brothers in arms not blood. Nanny is Elsa’s mother and has also raised the white girl, Fay, who was deserted by her mother. It is a source of bitter resentment by Elsa. Mr. Mack is the aboriginal host of the club, introduces the band members and runs the club’s competitions. Charlie is in love with Elsa and Fay is in love with Charlie but Elsa doesn’t love Charlie and Charlie doesn’t love Fay and Jack abuses Elsa who dotes on him. Tensions are exposed in the first half, but it is in the second half that they erupt in a flurry of confrontation. Nanny and Jack have both died when, forty years later, the club members return to remember the early days and protest against the removal of the club during a mining development. Hidden grievances are exposed. If family conflicts cannot be reconciled, what hope have generational and racial issues. And yet, Waltzing The Wilarra promises hope when Charlie’s death becomes a catalyst for reconciliation beneath an aboriginal flag and the removal of colonial shackles.

I have no programme to help an understanding of intention. The issues of love, loss, discrimination, jealousy, betrayal and bitter rivalry are lucid enough in Milroy’s play and Shipway’s production. Unfortunately, I could not decipher the lyrics in the most part because of poor sound mixing and diction with the exception of Lisa Maza’s perfect clarity as Nanny. Similarly. high pitched squeals and register by the vaudevillian caricatures left me bewildered. I suspect that Milroy’s Waltzing at Wilarra lacks the trust in the power of the lyrics and the text to capture and persuade. The songs were by and large incomprehensible and I thoroughly recommend a careful sound check in each venue. A play that deals with such relevant issues in post Voice Referendum Australia deserves to be clearly heard and effectively understood.

I notice while browsing the web that the original production appears to have been directed by Wesley Enoch and performed in a single venue over a substantial season. The touring production’s hard working and able performers deserve better support. Notwithstanding my reaction to the touring production difficulties experienced at The Q, audiences will find Milroy’s Australian musical largely entertaining and thought –provoking . A more tightly directed and edited work would make this production of Waltzing The Wilarra more impactful.

 

 

 

The Chosen Vessel

 

 The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg at The Street Theatre, Canberra, August 12 – 16, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night August 12

Director: Abbie-lee Lewis
Set Designer: Angie Matsinos
Costume Designer: Leah Ridley
Lighting Designer: Nathan Sciberras
Sound Designer: Kyle Sheedy
Photos: Canberra Streets, Helen Fletcher

Cast

WOMAN and GHOST– Laila Thaker

SWAGMAN, HUSBAND, YOUNG MAN, HORSEMAN,
BARMAN, TRAVELLERS and PRIEST – Craig Alexander
__________________________________________________________________________________

Dylan Van Den Berg’s The Chosen Vessel is a work of poetic theatre.  Words have meanings beyond the immediate in a setting of half-seen images in light and sound, creating a world full of emotional power.  The writer’s imagination appears as if real in this wonderful yet disturbing production.  

When reading a good poem, one’s imagination and feelings respond to the words, reaching an aha moment as you find yourself coming to an understanding in the last line.  In the theatre, our imaginations are enhanced by the stimulating work in the set design, lighting, sound and costumes, as well as, of course, in the directing and skills of the two actors in movement, facial expression and voice.

Laila Thaker, Craig Alexander
in The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg
The Street Theatre, Canberra 2025
Photos: Helen Fletcher

 This excellent production in the small Street Two space becomes a total poem.  That last line is “If the dead can see, why can’t you?”  

Then you understand what it means to describe this work as "Aboriginal Gothic Horror", and realise the nature of the truth about the European cultural invasion of Aboriginal Land – in practical terms:

                        Baby cries.
                        GHOST hangs a string of shells around baby’s neck.
                        GHOST disappears.
                        Sounds of the river:
                                            Blackout.
                                           THE END



Australia’s iconic publisher of our theatre – Currency Press – have made the script available with the program.  I suggest, though, that you see the play as I did without preconceptions.  Then reading The Chosen Vessel by Palawa man Dylan Van Den Berg, “after the short story by Barbara Baynton” will take you through the experience again that only live theatre can give you, and keep it as a living memory and understanding forever. 

 

 Frank McKone's reviews are also accessible at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com 

Wandering in Australia – the journey continues

Photography e-Book Review: Brian Rope

Wandering in Australia – the journey continues | Pele Leung

Publisher: Pele Leung Photography

Chinese Edition first published 2025

English Edition translated by DeepSeek AI in 2025

Pele Leung has travelled extensively in Australia chasing images and interesting travel stories. He considers writing to be one of the best ways to complement his photography. 

This e-Book is volume 2 of a two-volume product. The first volume Wandering in Australia – the journey begins has previously been reviewed. Both volumes are available in Chinese and English language versions. He writes “Over 20,000 kilometres of tarmac, dirt tracks and roadless wilderness were conquered in pursuit of the perfect frame, with no hour too early nor terrain too harsh when the light demanded it.”

This time we learn about uninvited guests, a blessing in disguise, new friends, fortune’s favour, and a chance encounter. We see and read about paddle steamers, snorkelling on the reef, autumn in Eden, and lava tubes. And much more.

There are beautiful images of small Lake Fyans, near Halls Gap in Victoria.

Lake Fyans, VIC

There’s a classic image of the artistically hand-painted VW beetle outside John Dynon’s art studio/gallery in the outback New South Wales town of Silverton.

Silverton, NSW

Writing about a Tasmanian Wilderness, Leung tells how the authorities have “carved a 60-kilometre scenic drive dotted with lookout points.” Trowutta Arch's sinkhole and Lake Chisholm's mirrored waters stood out for him.

Trowutta Arch, TAS

Lake Chisholm, TAS 

The artist tells us a story about a family holiday that included a high-speed boat tour along the southeastern Tasmanian coast. As they approached Cape Hauy, the boat “slowed beneath towering 100-metre cliffs that loomed with intimidating grandeur.” Another visit years later saw him hike to the Cape and take a rather different, but special, selfie.

Cape Hauy, TAS

At Mount Buffalo National Park in Victoria, he did the fifteen-minute climb from car park to The Horn - a granite sentinel crowning Mount Buffalo. Later that day, an unbroken cloud ceiling turned the water of Lake Catani into a dull mirror “serviceable for documentation, but devoid of magic.” 

Lake Catani, Mount Buffalo NP, VIC 

In the Northern Territory, Leung visited Uluru and captured another most interesting image of himself and the world-famous rock from the sunset viewing area, the rock glowing in the special light. 

Uluru, NT 

Nearby, at the equally wonderful Kata Tjuta, Leung embarked on the hiking trail known as “The Valley of the Winds” walk, having been warned that entering the valley proper requires scrambling up a steep slope on all fours. He captured some beautiful images of “a secluded world where desert oaks clustered between towering red walls”, then some striking shadow shots in “an amphitheater of stone”.

Walpa Gorge, Kata Tjuta NP, NT 

A visit to Cairns in Queensland “revealed an unexpected delight - a volcanic lake whose surface shifted between glassy calm and rippled texture, like a living Monet painting where reality and reflection became indistinguishable.”

Lake Eacham, Crater Lakes NP, QLD

And, in the Blue Mountains National Park in New South Wales, Leung explored the photogenic vistas of the Grand Canyon Track; the dim forest light demanding tripod use. 

Grand Canyon Track, Blue Mountains NP, NSW

Both e-Book volumes can be purchased on Leung’s website, peleleung.com. He is on Facebook at peleleungphotography and has videos on his YouTube channel @peleleung2688, including one about Wandering in Australia.

I will conclude by sharing the closing words Leung has overlaid on a beautiful water’s edge image:

Sleep's gentle tide crept o'er me slow,

As zephyrs through the pines did flow.

My eyelids drooped with gathering mist,

Where mountain vapours curled and kissed.

Towering firs stood sentinel tall,

Whilst blooms did grace the forest hall.

Before me stretched a winding track -

A thread to heaven's pearly rack.

Peak on peak in endless train,

While larks in azure vaults remain.

The cataract's thunderous refrain

Echoed through each rock-bound lane.

This earthly paradise so fair,

Yet proved but vapour, light as air -

One faltering step, and down I spun,

From dream-clad heights to waking sun.

 

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

THE CHOSEN VESSEL The Street Theatre

  

Laila Thaker - Craig Alexander in "The Chosen Vessel"

Written by Dylan Van Den Berg – Directed by Abbie-Lee Lewis

Set Design by Angie Matsinos – Costume Design by Leah Ridley

Lighting Design by Nathan Sciberras – Sound Design by Kyle Sheedy.

Street Theatre, Canberra August 9^th – 24^th 2005. Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS

By claiming the term Aboriginal Gothic to describe his play, The Chosen Vessel, playwright, Dylan Van Den Berg may well have hit upon an intriguing way to describe how he tells his stories, and in doing so, also a way of representing the difference in how indigenous and non-indigenous artists view events.

Van Den Berg’s play is a re-imagining of Barbara Baynton’s 19^th century short story, first published under the title, The Tramp in 1896, then later in 1902, in an extended version in a collection of Baynton’s stories under the title, The Chosen Vessel.  

Baynton’s story recounts the horrific events endured by a young aboriginal woman living alone in the Australian bush with her baby.

The story bears a striking resemblance to Henry Lawson’s, The Drover’s Wife, which was first published in 1892 just 4 years prior to Baynton’s, and which has since been re-imagined by Aboriginal  artist, Leah Purcel, as a play in 2016, a film in 2021, and even as an opera scheduled for presentation in the Sydney Opera House by Opera Australia in 2026.

Although the storyline for The Chosen Vessel involves nine characters, the playwright has stipulated that all these characters will be played by two actors. The Woman and Ghost by an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, woman-identifying actor; and the rest, who include a Swagman, Husband, Young Man, Horseman, Barman, Priest and a collection of white men, by one white, man-identifying actor.

While these stipulations may prove stimulating for actors and creatives, they provide significant challenges for audiences endeavouring to keep abreast of the nuances of the story, particularly in a theatre as intimate as Street Two.  

On opening night, despite some excellent work, not all of these challenges were overcome by director, Abbie-Lee Lewis and her actors, Laila Thaker and Craig Alexander.

Laila Thaker in "The Chosen Vessel"

As both the woman and the ghost, Laila Thaker is required by the script, as The Woman, to act out the events, and as the Ghost, comment on the action and provide connecting narration. At some points the ghost spoke from behind a scrim, but not always. So, whether she was speaking as ghost or woman was sometimes difficult to discern.

 Similarly, despite Craig Alexander’s undeniable skills as a versatile actor, the unrealistic expectation that any actor could be convincing in so many diverse roles, made it difficult to become invested in many of his characterisations, despite his best actorly efforts.

Craig Alexander in "The Chosen Vessel"

Leah Ridley’s costumes were generally satisfactory, although her decision to have the woman arrive in a costume that suggested wealth, while her environment indicated otherwise, was puzzling, and the poorly rendered priest’s cassock, a distraction. 

Abbie-lee Lewis’s atmospheric setting depicting a stark, bare kitchen with scrims and shrubbery representing the surrounding bush and other locations, effectively lit by Nathan Sciberras and enhanced with a moody soundscape by Kyle Sheedy  created the desired noir feel, but again the intimacy of the theatre meant that the mechanics required for the effects were often exposed  to the audience seated opposite, depriving the storytelling of much of its mystery.  

Therefore, despite the obvious care and attention that had obviously been lavished on this premiere production, it was not until the following morning, with the opportunity to read the full text, contained in the generous printed program, did the beauty and spirituality of Van Den Berg’s writing, and the subtleness of the many plot nuances contained therein, reveal themselves.  

With The Chosen Vessel Van Den Berg has written an important play destined to challenge and stimulate creative practitioners interested in exploring and sharing ideas of indigenous experience.

The Street Theatre’s foresight in providing Canberrans with the opportunity to experience this first iteration is to be commended.

                                             Images by Nathan Smith Photography

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

THE CHOSEN VESSEL

 

The Chosen Vessel.  By Dylan Van Den Berg after the short story by Barbara Baynton

Director Abbie-Lee Lewis. Set designer Angie Matsinos. Costume designer  Leah Ridley, Lighting designer Nathan Sciberras. Sound designer Kyle Sheedy. Stage Manager Zsuzsi Soboslay. Actors Craig Alexander. LailaThaker.  The Street. World premiere August 9. Season August 9 – 24 Street Two. Bookings 62471223 or foh@thestreet.org.au

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

Craig Alexander as The Husband. Laila Thaker as The Woman

 

 

‘If the dead can see why can’t you?”  It is the haunting admonition of the ghost of an aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander woman. The final line of Dylan Van Den Berg’s adaptation of Barbara Baynton’s nineteenth century short story The Chosen Vessel is unsettling, recriminatory and ultimately a vessel for truthtelling. Van Den Berg has established himself as a Palawa playwright of enormous significance with previous award winning works, the autobiographical Milk and White fella Yella Tree and Way back When. Van Den Berg’s adaptation not only attests to the power of his voice for First Nations Australians but his place as one of the most significant Australian playwrights to emerge in the twenty-first century.

Laila Thaker as The Woman in The Chosen Vessel

 

The Chosen Vessel presents a different approach to Van Den Berg’s previous works. He has chosen to adapt Baynton’s short story of a white woman, isolated in a remote bush setting and threatened by white males. In Van Den Berg’s transformation, Torres Strait Islander and Indian actor Laila Thaker plays a Blak mother, living alone with her baby in an isolated home in the Australian bush. White actor Craig Alexander plays multiple archetypal roles, a swagman. a young childhood friend, a brutal husband, a horseman and a priest.

Van Den Berg has stated that he has, as a First Nations playwright commandeered the Gothic genre. Aboriginal Gothic genre varies in certain respects from traditional Gothic as we may perceive it in the Western theatre tradition. In Abbie-Lee Lewis’s evocative production, Gothic conventions are superbly realized in Angie Matsinos’s atmospheric set design in the intimate Street Two setting, Nathan Sciberris’s shadowy lighting design and Kyle Sheedy’s dramatic sound design. The production plumbs the psyche. Dark imaginings, fear and terror, the chilling threat of danger and the brutal violence of anger are all aspects of the human experience in The Chosen Vessel.. However, Van Den Berg’s introduction of the Ghost from the very outset reminds us of connection to the spirit and ancestry. Emerging from the dark, the Ghost, also played by Laila Thaker, breathes life into landscape with her description of  Country, once unspoiled by the invasion and destruction of colonial occupation. Country is character in Van Den Berg’s adaptation. The language of the Ghost is the poetry of beauty, comfort and silence. In contrast the voice of the white characters becomes the language of violence and destruction of Country. The Chosen Vessel is a story of wrongs done and never righted, of Country lost and not regained. It is set at the time of Baynton’s short story and the turn of the 20^th Century. And yet in Van Den Berg’s poetic prose of protestation we are compelled to see the plight of the displaced, the deprivation of the oppressed, the theft of Country and the injustice of colonial invasion. Baynton dared to reveal the injustice faced by the white woman of her time.  Van Den Berg reveals the injustice faced still by the indigenous people of his time. It is in the re-imagining of this story that Van Den Berg’s transformative power as a storyteller will provide hope for a retelling of his people’s reality.

Craig Alexander as The Traveller in The Chosen Vessel

 

Van Den Berg could not wish for two more accomplished actors to play the multiple roles in The Chosen Vessel. As the Ghost, Thaker imbues the dynamic art of storytelling with the wisdom of her people and forthrightness of generations of experience. Her transition to the woman and mother of the infant child, isolated and vulnerable is heartrending, her fear and terror at her violent abuse shocking and visceral. She is Everywoman and one woman.  Alexander’s agile transition from one role to another endows each character with a distinctive persona from the ominous looming shadow behind the screen to the clumsy slapstick of the young boy, the vicious brutality of the swagman, the vision sighting horseman and the sanctimonious priest. In twelve short scenes and at little more than slightly over an hour of gripping theatre, Thaker and Alexander weave a tale of truth telling that reveals a damaged history. Unlike some western gothic literature the Aboriginal Gothic genre promises a possibility of transformation and  change..

The Street World Premiere of Van Den Berg’s The Chosen Vessel is a triumph of collaboration. This production may remind us of the wrongs of the past, but Van Den Berg’s skill as a playwright and the brilliant support of cast and creatives reinforces the Ghost’s opening lines;

“The truth’s like a whisper , aint it? You heard ‘em before”?

You’d think our tales would cure deafness, wouldn’t ya ?

But here I am –

Dragged back to tell ya –“

The Chosen Vessel is a lesson for our time. It is a powerful story you need to hear and see.

Photos by Nathan Smith Photography