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Canberra Today 12°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / Torchlight theatre throws light on the Australian experience

Matilda Ridgway and Shiv Palekar by torchlight
Matilda Ridgway and Shiv Palekar by torchlight
PRIVATE house theatre makes a welcome return to Canberra with the presentation of Duncan Ragg’s play “This, This Is Mine” from Sydney’s Corinthian Food Store Collective.

You won’t get into this one. It’s an invitation-only event, similar to many classical music concerts behind closed door in the ACT.

The maximum audience size is 16 and last night’s capacity house crammed into an unnamed private group house in O’Connor, decorated beautifully with candles and just big enough to fit in a musical set from Sydney Chinese digi-pop whiz kid Charles Wu, with a bit of help from his colleagues.

At first it seemed more like a party. Until, that is, we stepped into the side room, the “theatre,” where to the mysterious sounds of a waterfall (it was only when it stopped that I realised it was a recording) the play unfolded.

This was a night of intimate acting par excellence  and only actors of the professional calibre of Matilda Ridgway (Belvoir’s “Jasper Jones”) and Shiv Palekar (STC’s “Disgraced”) could have got away with it, since  every facial and hand gesture and every nuance was closely scrutinised by the audience. This kind of theatre is perfect for professionals exploring new texts but out of the  amateur ambit.

Director Ragg dispenses with an age-old convention of the theatre by lighting the play with torches, forcing the audience to focus very carefully.
“This, This Is Mine”, explores large questions of personal identity and ownership.

Set immediately after the funeral of Eva’s father, who appear to have left her his house (the “Mine” of the title perhaps), we meet Eva (Ridgway) herself, the interloper Lester (Palekar) and offstage, her indigenous boyfriend Ark, who is given a voice even in his absence.

It quickly emerges turns that they had formed an ethnically-balanced triumvirate of best mates in high school days, with Lester’s subcontinental background and Ark’s indigeneity coming into play.

But what is it that Eva wants from them either of them? And why did her father so often address her as ‘son,’ even though she has brothers? And does she delight in treating Lester with contempt, or does she have empathy with him?

Ragg has written these as brilliantly articulate characters, but in the hands of the two actors they behave and speak just like any contemporary Australian university student  — the intimacy allows total realism and the O’Connor setting was perfect.

Where does the play end? Ragg has two bob each way and leaves us, tantalisingly, in the dark.

Canberra theatre connoisseurs could do with more theatre of the kind that The Corinthian Food Store offers. It was formed by two NIDA graduates in 2012 with the idea of offering “unique live experience, tapping into Australia’s rich history of clowning, storytelling and live music.”

So far, so good.

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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