By Darby Turnbull
Shortly after their very fine revival of Beyond the Neck Theatreworks returns to Tom Holloway’s oeuvre with his 2008 play Red Sky Morning, which will also tour regional Victoria.
Through interconnected, verse-like monologues, Holloway the undercurrents of violence simmering behind the facades of unassuming ‘ordinary’ Australians. This time the violence is turned inward as each character will idealise an act of annihilation; to the self, the body or property. They’re equally incapable of reaching each other; their desolation makes the balm as inaccessible as the destruction. Isolated not just within their own family, but in their country town where everybody knows everybody and your foibles are on display for all to see. As he did in Beyond the Neck, Holloway vividly captures the rot at the core of Australian Suburban values; they’ve done their part; they have the business, the house, the kid; they’re living the dream, so why are they so miserable? Is it the toll they have to pay for the violence their lives are built on?
Father (Alpha Kargbo), mother (Emma Choy) and daughter (Izabella Day) are all occupying the same house; disassociated from each other; but not enough to desire that they weren’t. The man is suicidally depressed, the woman is an alcoholic, and their daughter is absorbing their pain whilst also trying to navigate her own adolescence. Holloway’s lacerating prose is embodied by three exceptional performers who deliver their wrought testimonials like they have to be forced out of them, like a back-alley operation without an anaesthetic.
Director Lyall Brooks (assisted by Seon Williams) stages the piece with forensic stasis, building upon the texts’ frequent references to dreams, the production evokes a symbiotic nightmare with the actor’s bodies and movement frequently acting in opposition to the banality of their actions. It’s a choice that makes for some striking images, such as the climax when they seemingly lose bodily autonomy and have to hold on to the set for dear life. Harry Gill’s stark, narrow platform, divided by metal poles is very effective at containing the characters and builds tension as they prowl around each other in close proximity; though it does occasionally feel like they’re in a suburban pole dancing studio. Sidney Younger (Lighting) and Jack Burmeister (Sound and Composition), as usual do stellar work. There’s a relentlessness to the soundscape and lighting changes that speaks to the myopic grimness of the character’s existence as their senses are constantly assaulted. Special shout out to the nimbleness of Operator and Stage Manager Jade Hibbert who facilitates the pace and tone with aplomb.
Alpha Kargbo is astonishingly raw as the Man, already exposed when the audience enters the theatre, he seems to keep shedding layers of emotional skin. He makes his characters essential decency and gentleness palpably sit in opposition to the ways his mind and body are turning on him. He’s one of the purest demonstrations of Brook’s concept, physically manifesting the subtext he’s trying so desperately to conceal, at times it looks like he’s being torn apart from the inside but he’s also able to hold space for the intimacy of the prose.
The always splendid Emma Choy lets the gravity of the Woman’s anguish fester; her shame and self-disgust both enabled and numbed by her increasing reliance on the beer she medicates herself with throughout the day. Choy’s thoughtful, calibrated performance endows her character with a dignity that is denied her within the context of the play, where she’s humiliated in the eyes of her child, community and herself.
Last year Izabella Day gave a superb study in adolescent female rage in the excellent Refined by Katy Warner, and she nails the assignment again as the unwilling witness to human forces larger than she can understand or control. There’s a lovely sense of her being unformed and huge emotions flowing into the parts of her still developing to hibernate before they’re ready (are they ever?). Whilst her parents are more broken down, Day shows a young woman still coming to terms with her capacity to wound and be wounded.
I’m very curious to see how this triptych portrait of regional life translates when it tours Victoria. The isolationist attitudes within our communities (and families) have only grown after the outbreak of Covid and Holloway’s play offers some confronting perspectives into the effects of letting an attitude silence inadvertently infect the home and the relationships within.
Image:Sarah Clarke
