When my parents immigrated to Australia in the 1980s, the modern mobile phone hadn’t been developed yet. To call home to their families, my parents would diligently save so that they could make one 15-minute phone call a month. In that small window of time, they would have to explain an entire life – a life that looked, smelt and tasted completely different to the one they left behind. Before international phone calls were possible, they would write letters.
Australia, a nation in some ways built on immigration (and invasion) is filled with generational stories like this – people that chose to leave loved ones behind in the hopes of a better and brighter future for their families. For some people, however, it wasn’t a choice. During World War II, many migrants were forced to flee their homes and separate from their families without an address to write back to.
Driftwood The Musical is not concerned with telling the many stories of those displaced in WWII, it is focused on telling just one family's story. Based on Eva de Jong-Duldig’s memoir Driftwood: Escape and Survival Through Art and the original stage play by Jane Bodie, Driftwood the Musical recounts the journey of Austrian artists Slawa (Tania de Jong) and Karl Duldig (Anton Berezin) and their daughter Eva (Bridget Costello) as they flee an invaded Austria to Switzerland, seek refuge in Singapore and then finally find a home in Australia. Along the way they must part with Slawa’s sister Rella (the impressive Michaela Burger) and her husband Marcel (Nelson Gardner), Karl’s brother (also played by Gardner) and Karl’s prized art collection.
This is not the story of a family fleeing, but the story of a family finding their way back to one another.
In the first act we are introduced to a young and naive Eva, whose father gifts her a box of artefacts from their time in Austria for her 18th birthday. The artefacts detail Slawa and Karl’s lives as artists and the surprising way Slawa invented and patented the foldable umbrella. The sequential retelling in the first act is subtle, ambling but aided by a vivid and smartly designed set (Jacob Battista) and audio-visual enhancements (Justin Gardam). A screen made to look like a ripped piece of paper is hung from the ceiling above a modest living room-come-art-exhibition-space. Columns and rows of cupboards that feature various sculptures and paintings are displayed, hidden and then revealed again. They become the call back to Slawa and Karl’s identities in Austria, a reminder of who they are and the stability they are unable to recreate at each new place they call home.
Costello weaves in and out of orchestral, often operatic and theatrical songs by Anthony Barnhill (delivered by an on-stage pianist and two violinists) to set up real events and watch as they are re-enacted on stage. The musical direction is moving and unafraid to use a dramatic pause, staccato sequences and abrupt halts for dramatic effect, but that is as far as ingenuity goes. The lyrics do well to communicate time, place and character, but they aren’t very memorable, and the words often serve to monotonously sentimentalise events rather than use them to forward the plot. Where the songs start to blend into each other and the story ambles, Barnhill’s seamless transitions between underscore, and the accompaniment and Gardam’s AV projections (which include real photographs and videos) do their best to draw you back in and remind you of the horrific global impact of the Holocaust.
Though the set and AV design remain a constant feature, walking into the second half is like walking into a completely different show. Eva is now a much older, boisterous narrator who, frustrated by her parents’ secrecy, is trying to trace her family's journey through a series of letters that she suddenly has within her possession. In this new, more engaging approach to storytelling, the audience is presented with two compelling yet unestablished relationship trajectories – the story of a daughter trying to discover who her parents really are, and the story of two sisters displaced by war.
With Tania de Jong creating, producing and playing her own grandmother in a show based on her mother’s memoir, Driftwood is filled with much earnestness and passion. But perhaps sentimentality has clouded the production’s ability to reach its full potential. The insistence on the memoir format means that many events may have been included because they are nostalgic for this family of artists, but dramaturgically do not always progress the story, cause conflict or lead to character development. These events cloud what could and should have been the heart of the show. This is not the story of a family fleeing, but the story of a family finding their way back to one another. The musical numbers that build on this more universal sentiment are the show’s most compelling – perhaps there is one more iteration of Driftwood to be seen that tells that story.
Driftwood the Musical is playing at Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst, from June 7-18. Tickets range from $49-$99 and you can get yours here.
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