There actually aren’t a lot of palindromes in the English language. The only one I can ever think of, when pressed, is “race car”. Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed has thought of a few more than this one, and created an entirely palindromic piece of theatre (the same backwards as it is forwards), which lands at the 2024 Sydney Festival backed by critical acclaim and multiple awards. It’s a real puzzle, much like the problem of the global destruction and crisis that is its subject matter.
At first, there is only a tree bearing a single apple (the Garden of Eden?), and a woman (Eve?) curled up in the corner of the large black Roslyn Packer Theatre stage. At the end, they’ll come back here – but how? The rest of the production slowly unfurls, propelled by a hope that the awkward nonsense that the actors are speaking and doing will reveal itself when we start to go forwards (or backwards?) again. It’s a quaint metaphor for the impossible “way forward” after the damage we’ve done to our world (climate change, colonisation and capitalism, to name a few), and gives a very simple answer about what we do next: something, and one step at a time.
This production’s dense layering of scenography, light, video, sound, and lighting design (by Philip Aguirre, Jeroen Wuyts, Seppe Brouckaert, and Babette Poncelet) comes together to create a garden bed of rainbow plastic bags, a huge effigy of a young man in a t-shirt, only to then hide it in smoke and run it magically backwards (I won’t spoil that for you). It’s the kind of theatre that defies your regular fast-paced, dialogue-heavy play that has all the answers. Under Alexander Devriendt’s direction, the cast’s every movement and syllable is painstakingly precise, building and building to a fate we all know is coming. And yet, we watch, and watch – hoping that something might be different the second time.
Technically dazzling and filled with question marks, empty spaces, pollution, and nonsense, Are we not drawn onward to new erA refuses to relent. Be warned: it’s mind-numbingly slow, repetitive, even boring at times – but then, so is living through the climate era. Let it hold your attention.
Are we not drawn onward to new erA is playing at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay, as part of Sydney Festival from Jan 16-20. Tickets are $79-$109+bf and you can snap them up over here.
