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Canberra Today 12°/16° | Saturday, March 30, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Play finds truth in fictional history

Kiara Tomkins, Antonia Kitzel, Robbie Haltiner and Caitlin Baker. Photo: Helen Drum

WHEN I catch up with director Tony Llewellyn-Jones, he’s on the last round of technical and dress rehearsals for Canberra REP’s fourth production for 2021, “The Governor’s Family”, which had been delayed because of last year’s covid restrictions.

One of Australia’s best-known actors, still regularly in work after a long career on stage, Llewellyn-Jones normally calls Sydney home, so counts himself very lucky to be in town for this important stage of the production. Luckily he’s a resident in Gorman Arts Centre’s upstairs flat, an experience he calls “delightful”.

Llewellyn-Jones is animated as he speaks of Beatrix Christian’s admired play, first aired at the Australian National Playwright’s Conference at the ANU in 1996 then premiered at Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre in 1997, when director Neil Armfield described the work as “about acknowledging the past in order to deal openly and honestly with the present and the future” and yet written from, and of, and for this time.

Peter Holland as Governor Mountgarrett. Photo: Helen Drum

“I remember that production so well,” Llewellyn-Jones says, “it had an amazing cast, with Arthur Dignan playing the governor and Gillian Jones playing the wife.

“It’s a pity Beatrix is no longer writing plays,” he adds, in reference to the fact that fact Christian has long since found a more lucrative occupation in writing for film and television, with scripts behind her for the film “Jindabyne” and episodes of the mini-series “Picnic at Hanging Rock”.

Before writing, he explains, “The Governor’s Family”, Christian thoroughly researched the play’s era, and extrapolated from the notorious 1886 Mount Rennie gang rape case in Sydney, where the then Governor of New South Wales, Lord Carrington, intervened to ensure that the full force of the law — the newly-introduced death penalty — fell on the chief perpetrators.

Antonia Kitzel and Kiara Tomkins. Photo: Helen Drum

The governor in the play is not Carrington, but rather the fictitious Governor Mountgarrett, who brings the rape victim, an Aboriginal girl, Frances Pod, into Government House as an act of reconciliation and compassion, upon which, Llewellyn-Jones says, “the plot thickens”.

“Beatrix has written a play that is filmic, fluid in its transitions and a challenge for the designer [Andrew Kay] – but I think we’ve met the challenge.”

The play, he explains takes people back into time to speculate on how we dealt with indigenous people in an earlier era, hinting at how to reconcile in the present area.

As well, in the subplot there are the activities of “The Bulletin”, leading the charge to Federation against a background of racism.

Christian has posited a scenario in which, after the governor played by Peter Holland, brings Frances into Government House in around 1897. His wife and family immediately have suspicions, and indeed it seems that the girl is the result of a liaison between the Governor and an Aboriginal girl in West Sydney.

The character Frances, played by Queanbeyan actor and year 12 student Kiara Tomkins, finds strength through her experience, pretty well taking over in Government House to face the new century.

An interesting element hinted at, Llewellyn-Jones believes, is that the character of the Governor’s wife could reflect playwright Christian’s own partial German ancestry and indeed Antonia Kitzel, who plays Lady Mountgarrett, comes from Munich.

As for playing around with historical facts, it’s happening all the time, Llewellyn-Jones says, and “the ghosts of our colonial past cannot be forgotten… Vice-Regal secrets warrant attention at any time, even fictional ones.”

“The Governor’s Family”, Canberra REP Theatre, Acton, July 2-17. Book here or 6257 1950.

 

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Helen Musa

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