Two marvellous new actors have just been introduced to Brisbane audiences.
Orlando Dunn-Mura and Felix Peam provided a flawless performance. It was gripping, insightful, and challenging, all delivered by two boys under 16 years old.
Kate Mulvany and Anne-Louise Sarks reimagine some of the story imagined by Euripides about Medea. In writing this new play, they put a mirror to our understanding of the world. And they do it with an acute understanding of the layers of language.
We think that children don’t know what’s going on? Because they don’t have the language of adulthood? That doesn’t mean their games and imaginations aren’t entirely connected to what’s happening around them. They know exactly when something is going on. They know very well. Don’t pretend they don’t. Innocent they may be. It doesn’t mean they are ignorant.
The play was well written and well delivered to a very enthusiastic audience at Billie Brown. The set itself reimagined the connection between actors and audience. It relies on our modern experience of being a voyeur to intimate happenings in the world without any intention of intervening ourselves. We are truly an audience, treating the world as a source of distraction and release from the infarctions within our own lives. Yet the audience in Medea happily emoted throughout the play, as if they were watching their own children play from a monitor in the kitchen.
Daniel Jones’ direction created this flawless performance. It is obvious that this work is well prepared and directed, probably over a long period of time. Chloe Greaves’ set design took our breath away. It brought the whole performance into our lives in this place, Brisbane. Matt Scott’s use of lighting to create the galaxy scene was bewitching.
It was so absorbing that, at the end, I wasn’t sure if it was the interval or it was over. It was over. I’d made the mistake of expecting the climax would be in the adult world. It wasn’t. It was in the lives and deaths of the children, as children.
And, paradoxically, the whole play was tightly held together by Helen Cassidy as their mother, Medea. While her appearances were short and sharp, they were both poignant and endearing. She was the foil that gave the life of the children true meaning. Remember that mothers!
On at the Queensland Theatre Company’s Billie Brown theatre until 8th June. Book here: https://queenslandtheatre.com.au/plays/medea
Kerry McGovern
