“BUT this rough magic I here abjure… and deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book,” exiled magician Prospero says at the end of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”.

The words provide the title for Helen Machalias’ play about the refugee experience “This Rough Magic”, aptly renamed from its previous title, “Barren Ground”, under which it was developed at The Street Theatre in 2020.

Prospero’s words are a rejection of magic and power, but that’s not exactly what happens in Machalias’ magical remote island – Christmas Island – as I find when I catch up with Beng Oh, the director of the premiere production coming to The Street shortly. 

Oh explains how this “heartfelt work” takes Shakespeare and the asylum-seeker experience in Australia and “mashes them together to make something new”.

The inspiration came to Machalias from shocking events of December 2010 with the shipwreck of “Siev 221”, a suspected illegal entry vessel, at Flying Fish Cove off Christmas Island where 48 asylum seekers, mostly from Iraq and Iran, perished and 42 made it to shore.

Starting from there, “Rough Magic” introduces survivors Prospero, his daughter Miranda and fellow passenger Ariel, assisted by Caliban and other Christmas Islander locals, to be played by a tight cast of Reza Momenzada, George Kanaan, Lainie Hart, Kaitlin Nihill and Andre Le.

Oh, a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, is well-known in Melbourne for working with diverse casts, and no stranger to “mashed up” drama, having also staged a modern take on Marlowe’s “Dr Faustus” with university students in Ballarat.

He’s happy to work on Machalias’ “text-rich” play, relishing the poetry and the way she has worked in words by legendary Persian writers Ferdowsi, Hafez, and Attar in a respectful nod to the many Iranians aboard “Siev 221”. 

“Helen’s text is marvellously imaginative,” Oh says. “You just don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s set on Christmas Island, which is a long way away, but she brings it very close to you and makes the story into an Australian story.”

Emphasising that it has been a collaborative exercise, Oh stresses the role of designer Imogen Keen Have plays “evoking place”, also collaborating in equal measure with Tehran-born filmmaker, Granaz Moussavi and ANU’s Rebecca Clode as dramaturg, lighting designer Gerry Corcoran and sound designer Kyle Sheedy.

“In the play there is one marvellous event after the other,” Oh says.

Among those events are the catastrophic shipwreck, with Christmas Islanders trying to help people by throwing lifejackets, the death of a refugee, Prospero’s defection to the other side become a senior administrator responsible for the management of the detention centre, then the closure of the island, with the refugees moving to Villawood.

“But this is most definitely not documentary or verbatim theatre,” Oh says. “This is a work of the imagination and Helen has challenged us.”

He concedes that there is a political layer with verbatim transcripts in the play, including politicians’ voices and media reports, but it’s not done in a heavy way.

“I would say the play uses ‘The Tempest’ as a lens through which we look at events, but Helen does it playfully,” he says.

“I’ve done a lot of work in comedy. I believe that comedy is the best way to deal with big issues, so the characters of Prospero, Miranda and Ariel are a delightful combination – Prospero, the opportunist, and Ariel, both want to get to Australia and will do anything to make it happen, but their story is wrapped around Miranda, a young woman coming into adulthood.”

The play, he believes, is a collective experiment in the “post-covid era of theatre,” but it will be exciting: “I have a low boredom threshold, and I promise you it will not be a boring event.”

“This Rough Magic”, The Street Theatre, November 11-19.