Ray is a farmer. Ray is dying. Ray is falling in love. Ray has had a tough year. Ray mourns his wife. Ray meets his wife. Ray doesn’t want to live in a nursing home. Ray’s kids don’t understand him. Ray doesn’t understand why the world won’t let him live his life.
Ray, played with impressive physicality and nuance by veteran actor Colin Friels, is the central figure of Into the Shimmering World – a new work commissioned by Sydney Theatre Company that makes the intimate epic, seesawing back and forth in time but remaining locked in space. The main arena of conflict is the family farm that Ray and his wife, nurse Floss (fellow veteran Kerry Armstrong) have run their entire adult lives. It’s a hard existence, but a rewarding one, contending with droughts, floods, fluctuating markets, and unruly neighbours (one dubbed “The Crook” remains an unseen presence, but a constant source of grievance).
Written by 2020 Patrick White Playwrights Fellow Angus Cerini and directed by STC’s Director of New Work and Artistic Development Paige Rattray, Into the Shimmering World is a study of Australian masculinity – as were the previous works in Cerini’s Australian gothic trilogy, The Bleeding Tree and Wonnangatta. In many ways this play is a study of stoicism, its strengths and its limitations. The laconic Ray meets every challenge with a resigned determination that borders on fatalism, an attitude that has served him well for decades. But the sons his work put through university don’t want to take on the family farm, and Ray’s quiet strength is no match for the larger forces arrayed against him: the land, the economy, and his own advancing age and failing health.
Into the Shimmering World offers us a closely observed view of the peculiar vulnerability of Australian working class masculinity.
The whole thing plays out on a minimalist set designed by David Fleischer, the farmhouse kitchen sitting on a raised dais and sketched out with only a few props and furnishings. There’s nothing inessential – life is hard in the country, and there’s no room for anything extraneous. Similarly, the script is brisk yet meditative, clocking in at a tight 90 minutes with no intermission.
Yet, within that framework, Into the Shimmering World offers us a closely observed view of the peculiar vulnerability of Australian working class masculinity. To anyone familiar with the milieu (including this reviewer, who grew up in rural Western Australia) Ray is instantly recognisable and unarguably authentic: self-effacing, self-sacrificing, stubborn, but a hard worker who demonstrates his love through his labour. He’s not one for outward displays of affection – his son (James O’Connell) has to force a hug out of him, while his clear adoration of Armstrong’s Floss is communicated in simple, coded phrases – the shorthand that emerges between long term couples. A scene where Ray confesses his feelings of failure and inadequacy hits hard, as we feel how painful it is for him.
You can draw comparisons with Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (and for extra resonance, Friels played Willie Loman for Belvoir back in 2012), which covered similar thematic territory, but Into the Shimmering World’s cultural specificity sets it apart. Thankfully, it’s by no means poverty porn. Far too many works trying to depict “The Plight of the Poors” come across as paternalistic and condescending – the ABC’s well meaning but wrongheaded drama series The Heights comes immediately to mind. By contrast, Cerini approaches the material with empathy, understanding, and a complete absence of judgement.
Australian acting legend Bruce Spence provides dry comedy as Ray and Floss’ neighbour, “Old Mate”, while Renee Lim does double duty in two key supporting roles. But this is Friels’ show, and the veteran performer well and truly delivers. Into the Shimmering World is a superb drama, anchored by a stunning performance from Friels – clear-eyed, powerful, and deeply affecting.
Into the Shimmering World is playing until May 19, 2024, at Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf 1 Theatre, Walsh Bay. Tickets range from $81-$125 and you can get yours over here.
Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Sydney newsletter for more news, travel inspo and activity ideas, straight to your inbox.
