Dead Heart
By Nicholas Parsons
Directed by Neil Armfield
Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney
Reviewed by Helen Jarvis
Acres of red dust trucked in from the outback set the stage for a gripping account of the clash of cultures and laws — and, indeed, perceptions of reality — in the desert town of Wala Wala, 600 km west of Alice Springs.
Nicholas Parsons' play was commissioned and developed by the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and performed at the Festival of Perth by Black Swan.
The Belvoir Street Theatre has chosen to set the production in the former Eveleigh Railway Yards in Redfern, allowing an epic approach. Campfires and a waterhole with a single dominating rock are the only features on the huge red dust stage, with sterile boxes of white settlement — each with a small bar fridge and matching blond furniture — lined up along one edge.
Neil Armfield lets his usual theatrical verve have full rein in this production, counterposing haunting Aboriginal singing, magic and didge playing with huge lumbering police trucks and assorted cars spinning across the dust and around the fires.
The story is long and complicated, beginning with the hanging of an Aboriginal man in the police lockup, a tragedy whose repercussions percolate through both black and white communities of Wala Wala with terrible consequences.
The large cast includes a number of familiar faces from television, film and the Sydney stage and also a number of Western Australian actors not previously seen in Sydney. Kevin Smith as Poppy, the Aboriginal elder in a red satin rodeo shirt, and Steve Bisley as the cop give strong lead performances, while Geoff Kelso plays a convincingly tepid anthropologist and, after removing his beard and glasses, returns to the stage as a detective looking more recognisable. The TV crew who arrive in Wala Wala to catch the action are all too irritatingly familiar.
This is theatre on the grand scale, well worth seeing. But if it's a cool night, dress warmly: the wind can roar through the old workshop, freezing all before it.