By Darby Turnbull
Premiering at Griffin Theatre Company in 2022 Dylan Van Den Berg’s Whitefella Yella Tree was hailed as ‘new Australian classic’ (Sydney Morning Herald) and the enthusiasm has only gotten more glowing with return seasons at Sydney Theatre Company and La Boite and now for a precious four performances, a stopover at Union Theatre Arts and Cultural Building. It’s more than equal to the hype. This is only my second time at the newly renovated Union Theatre, the first time was Rising’s presentation of S. Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking, so two for two UMAC seems to be the place to be for some of the best theatre Australia has to offer. Four performances in Naarm isn’t enough, we need it back as soon as possible. Excuse me while I go order several copies of the script to immerse myself in until that happens.
Ty (Joseph Althouse) from the River Mob and Neddy from the Mountain Mob (Danny Howard) meet once every new moon under a lemon tree (yella tree) to exchange intelligence. The sensitive, cerebral Ty is a holder of knowledge and a gifted storyteller and poet, he will hold what he learns and pass it on. The energetic, swaggering Neddy is training to be a warrior, a defender. Under the spectre of the yella tree and 250 years of history Ty and Neddy fall deeply in love and grow from boys to men as the mysterious White Fella’s they’ve been observing from a distance come closer and closer.
Van Den Berg’s text is exquisitely formed; the playful, boyish banter that organically evolves into flirtation, then seduction is pitched perfectly to the bravado and awkwardness of teenage boys but is frequently interspersed with breathtaking poetry. When the boys do finally get physical, special mention must go to Intimacy Co-ordinator Bayley Turner (building off the original work of Akala Newman) for the stylised but gorgeously truthful evocation of early expressions of desire.
Van Den Berg’s gift, shared by his character Ty is his capacity to endow the language with the gravity that the themes demand; love and genocide being the most weighty.
Directed by Declan Greene and Amy Sole the impacts of Colonisation are conspicuous from the beginning. Pointedly performed in English with contemporary language and design; Mason Browne dresses both the boys in t shirts, shorts and sneakers; one of them wearing (I’m guessing) Clothing the Gap; it’s only gradual that we realise, with vice like dread, that Neddy and Ty are witnessing the early stages of Western Invasion. When period costuming does appear on stage it takes your breath away.
Running at 90 minutes; the density of Van Den Berg’s script curated by Greene and Sole is all the more the astonishing in that doesn’t overwhelm with the breadth of ideas, emotions and themes that the story contains, by keeping it so contained the scope of its ambition flourishes so the devastating propulsion of the inevitable hits all the harder. Because we know of course that with the forced settling of the British comes rape and abduction (Neddy’s sister is kidnapped and disappears), disease, the desolation of culture and language. Much of the publicity for this piece has emphasised the beauty of seeing a Blak, Queer love story on the mainstage but what the play pointedly conveys is that without the insertion of dogmatic, Western ideas on morality Ty and Neddy wouldn’t even use those terms to describe themselves. One of the more devastating narrative threads is the ways that the purity and simplicity of their bond is corrupted not just by physical distance but by Neddy being brainwashed when he joins the settlers ranks under the auspice of finding his sister.
Joseph Althouse and Danny Howard (succeeding original actors Guy Simon and Callan Purcell) are each superb. Althouse’s Ty carries the all-encompassing weight of being a witness and the introspection to grasp the impact. Blessed with some of Van Den Berg’s more lyrical lines he captures the joy of weaving images of with words and the blunt devastation of that skill ceasing to be a match for the violence being wrought. They each hold the tragedy of a culture being erased in real time but it’s Ty who holds the terror, rage and devastation of not just forgetting what he’s learnt but the loss when there’s no one left to tell.
Howard has the challenge of being the character led more by brawny impulse. He moves his body like it acts two beats before his mind has registered what it’s doing whilst also showing the cockiness and eventual pride in what his body is capable of; namely the pleasure that comes from his lover’s touch. As the play progresses and Neddy becomes more immersed and complicit in the culture of the WhiteFellas, Howard’s range as performer really ignites as his shame, powerlessness and self-deceit overwhelms him.
Stylistically, I’m reminded of just how many great theatrical designers we have working in Australia right now, often in defiance of technical ‘developments’. Mason Browne’s set, even in its truncated (pun intended) form for the tour, is a beautiful template for the heightened emotions and the text’s connection to nature and how it connects with the characters developing psyches, Kelsey Lee and Kate Sfetkidis’s lighting and Steve Toulman’s sound are immersive when they need to be but also essential to the punctuation of scenes and burgeoning destruction.
In a year where most of the theatre I’ve seen, to be frank, has been reflective of the fatigue and despondency that is taking over our communities and I believe radically impacting the quality of what’s been presented, Whitefella Yella tree is an essential act of defiance to the notion that theatre is somehow disposable or a luxury afforded to the few. Structurally speaking it’s one of the best new plays I’ve seen in a decade. Culturally speaking (if I may speak as a Western Settler) it’s vital and I hope its place in Modern Australian literature sustains.
Image: Prudence Upton
