The opening night performance of Sydney Festival’s season of Man with the Iron Neck began with a minute of silence to reflect upon the loss of five Indigenous girls – aged 12 to 15 – to suicide across nine days in January.
That’s a shocking and devastating fact by any stretch, and digging deeper into the stats – Aboriginal people are six times more likely to take their own lives than non-Aboriginal people – only paints a darker picture.
It’s hard to imagine many issues more urgent than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth suicide, and this physical theatre piece looks to unpack some of the contributing factors to this ongoing crisis and understand how it affects families and communities.
With a script by Ursula Yovich, and direction by Josh Bond (who came up with the original concept) and Gavin Robins, it’s a deeply moving piece of theatre, seamlessly integrating aerial performance with text and video projections.
Ash (Tibian Wyles) and Bear (Kyle Shilling) are more than best friends; they’re practically brothers. Bear is about to kick off his AFL career and leave the small town they grew up in, but the bond between these two boys is staying strong. It should be the most exciting time of Bear’s life, but he’s haunted by a memory from his past and traumas that have been passed down his family line.
The pressure eventually comes too much for Bear and the seemingly inevitable happens. His mother, Mum Rose (Ursula Yovich), and sister, Evelyn (Caleena Sansbury), are absolutely shattered by the fact that yet another tragedy has been visited upon their family. Ash feels enormous guilt for not knowing the depth of his friend’s despair, and becomes fascinated by a 20th century stuntman called the Great Peters, who was known for hanging himself by the neck and surviving.
It’s appropriate that Ash should become fascinated with a stuntman, as the aerial work in this production – by Sydney physical theatre company Legs on the Wall – is absolutely key to its success. It’s movement that’s absolutely connected to the emotional content of the show, whether it be the young actors climbing and spinning around on the Hills Hoist at the centre of the stage, or literally flying in and out of each other’s lives.
But there are a few problems here that leech the play of a lot of its dramatic momentum, if not its impact: the sound on opening night wasn’t optimal, and it sometimes felt like you were listening to dialogue through a thin wall. I didn’t miss any of the dialogue, but did constantly feel like I was being kept at a distance from this family’s crisis. While Yovich understands how to play the space, some of the younger cast members can’t quite overcome this issue; their performances ring true, their physicality is right on point, but they struggle to fill the venue with these characters and their predicaments.
And despite the fact that Yovich has written some gorgeous dialogue and monologues – a scene where she talks about giving birth to her twins is absolutely stunning and full of emotional insight – you might think there’s a chapter of the story missing: in one scene Mum Rose is caught in a cycle of grief and unwilling to leave the couch; in the next, she’s up and about, and doing pretty well.
It’s a shame these issues haven’t been totally ironed out, because every bump that pops up undermines the emotional gut-punches the play delivers. It’s an undeniably “important” piece of theatre, but with a little more work it could be one of the truly great pieces of theatre to come out of Australia in recent years.
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