York - evoking our shared past.
/Held over from the COVID-19 cancelled Black Swan season, York finally is on stage at the State Theatre Centre.
The curtain rises on a monumental multi-level set in weathered and faded greys rising in layers from the stage floor.
A tree changer couple are moving into the old building – the reputedly haunted former Hospital in the rural town of York over the escarpment from Perth. As one of the partners is left alone to unpack, the house starts to assert a ghostly presence on her life. Flickering lights and power surges. Ghostly aboriginal child wandering through the space.
Scene changes to 1985 and the arrival of a troop of scouts led by whistle blasting mums (fond of sitting on the verandah with cask wine after the kids are sent to their dorm for the night to tell scary stories and scare the younger ones. This part of the play draws on memes of jolly good fun Enid Blyton adventure stories from a childhood in another century morphing into RL Styne Goosebumps story for another. The characters are larger than life caricatures, played for comic effect, evoking generations of campfire stories to scare the whatsits from children.
My son Ben, born 1992, reminded me of his Year 4 camp to the Old Hospital and the scary stories shared after lights out. A rich source of collective Western Australian memory. The people behind me in interval reminisced about being in the scouts and the Gang Show.
There was plenty of deft stage trickery and work for the Stage Crew with faulty electricity. Radios crackling to life. Jugs that fly off the bench. Ghost-like figures materialising then disappearing. Lighting effects. Sound effects. Short scenes, more reminiscent perhaps of a film script (you can see the likely film slated already). A StageManger’s nightmare or dream!
Act 2 moves further back in time to when the hospital housed returned soldiers suffering flashbacks to WW1 trenches and the story of the Matron who, against police as policies of the times, treated gave aid to an aboriginal child suffering the Influenza pandemic. Neat touch for these pandemic times. The Matron is, of course, the ghostly figure from Act 1. The demise of the Matron was somewhat arbitrary and I felt that the storyline truncated. The straight line plotting from Point A to Point B is unashamedly obvious.
The next part goes to the days of first settlement, when early settlers and First Nations people come into contact. Initial feelings of fear and distrust, early attempts to build relationships, senseless killings and retribution. The eventual hunting of the fugitive. This section is played on the apron of the stage in front of the set. The actors stand arrayed narrating directly to the audience. When you think about it, this is consistent with Nyoongar traditions of Yarning and storytelling (but I couldn’t help think it was straight from the playbook of R.S. Breen, Chamber Theatre and Northwestern, with a dash of Brecht thrown in.) This story of first contact and disillusionment lies at the heart of the sadness driving this play. Told with simplicity and a moving lack of sentimentality, the darker history of place and culture are brought into focus.
Through this section, I wished that some stage magic had been invoked and the looming presence of the set been softened in someway. Perhaps a scrim or lighting effect. At the end of the section, there was a sense of relief when with sound and projected imagery, the set was flooded with images of ghost gums. This use of imagery earlier would have been a stronger way of suggesting how the building imposed on the land cannot overpower the potency of the land itself. The land is ever present. This could have been usefully strengthened in all the previous scenes. It would have softened the suggested reality of a filmic approach with an appropriate theatricality.
The play calls forth stories of boodja (country or land in Nyoongar language). In one sense there is recognition that the house and the land have a timelessness – they are not in one time but in all times. The past is present in the land. All experiences of the land are palimpsest of what has gone before - faded images drawn over what happened before.
Every act before sends a shockwave through the land, like ripples in a river of time, and it shakes the buildings where we live and shifts the earth on which we stand. Irene, Act
Recently I’ve been revisiting some writing from 1992 and re-working it (for my own enjoyment, nothing more). A line from what I wrote then still resonates with me is that time is not an arrow. In this play, the sense of a straight line connection – ghostly Matron to living Matron, for example – feels a little bit obvious as if the writers don’t trust the audience to get it. The layers of the play are clearly stratified, perhaps a little too obviously. The final section of the play gives some feel for that multi layering of time, returning to the opening couple and the reminder of another deaths in custody incident – the open wound of an unresolved history of settlement and reconciliation.
A strong production which will resonate with Western Australian audiences that reinforces the power of theatre to put our contemporary lives into perspective.
A side conversation to be had about the title York. It feels a little prosaic. Accurate geographically, true. Like so many places in colonial Western Australia, the names of other places are superimposed on country with no regard for the long imprint of time. A title with more sense of multi-layered ambiguity would work better for me.
Interesting that this is announced as a co production of Black Swan and WAYTCO. I am not sure what the connection is – could the younger characters be played by youth actors. That is not to say that the likeable performers don’t successfully sketch in the younger ones. This could have been an opportunity to bring together generations. (Though those of us in the long game will note that Ben Mortley was himself a member of LYT/WAYTCO a while back). It would be great to see this play included for study by drama and history students.
