It’s 1911. Five men trudge through a neverending barrage of snow and ice. All around them is more and more ice, unfathomably large blocks of it, and before them, they see nothing but whiteness. Only, are they actually battling a literal tundra? Are they actually brave Antarctic explorers, or are they dealing with something else entirely? Regardless, they look a little worse for wear, their feet hurt, they don’t know where they are, and they would much rather be inside.
Written by Patricia Cornelius (Shit, Love and Runt) in 2006, and finally making its mainstage debut with Sydney Theatre Company, Do Not Go Gentle follows these five “explorers” through a somewhat real and somewhat imagined journey to the South Pole. Captain Robert Falcon Scott (Philip Quast) leads his motley crew – the outspoken but rickety Evans (Peter Carroll), the navigator who can’t remember who or where she is (Brigid Zengeni), the grumpy, grieving Oates (John Gaden) and the ever-optimistic pocket rocket Wilson (Vanessa Downing).
Patricia Cornelius’ sense of humour and place demands your full attention...
This is the kind of play that seeps into your bones like the cold. Charles Davis’ incredible set features hills of ice, scattering snow, and a central window of a platform that at first slides open to reveal the freezing blue sky that the explorers leave behind them, and later, glimpses of reality outside the Antarctic. Davis’ brilliant costumes work as hard as the set does – Marilyn Richardson plays Maria, an operatic spectre dressed in swathes of black, and later a lost woman dressed in her silk nightclothes and wandering the tundra. The explorers wear large mittens of leather and fur, and curl up to sleep engulfed in similar brown sleeping bags.
Cornelius’ writing in this play, like many of her other works, focuses not on the lofty language of the learned explorer, but rather on the rough rhyme of the Australian working class. It’s almost Shakespearean in parts, including a double-entendre involving a bra full of rocks (truly). The characters tell vivid stories of places and people that they have been, which become all the more harrowing when they echo across a vast, unforgiving landscape. Cornelius’ sense of humour and place demands your full attention – with your head constantly somewhere between the huge ice formations in front of you and the “real” world, where death waits for us all.
It’s no surprise then that the cast is made up of the stuff of Australian theatrical legend, directed delicately by Paige Rattray. They do their best work in scenes that feature one or two characters, which serve to unlock the play’s metaphorical argument piece by piece. Richardson’s operatic voice is arresting, particularly at the age of 87, but her role is not always clear. In the opening scenes of each act her singing serves as an atmospheric device that is continued in the deep and orchestral sound design composed by James Brown. Maria’s best scene blends her singing and acting together, using song as a way to extend the sense of loss and displacement she feels.
Do Not Go Gentle is a wandering journey through the regret, loss and loneliness of life. Cornelius’ poetic approach sketches a map of feeling, and leaves the colouring and the contouring mostly to you. What a terror and a wonder it is to forge your way through, with nothing but the end in sight.
Do Not Go Gentle is playing at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay, from May 23 to June 17. Find out more and snap up tickets over here.
