Monday 25 October 1999

A Return to the Brink by Rodney Hall Oct 25 1999


A Return to the Brink by Rodney Hall, by Playbox
at Merlin Theatre until November 13, 1999
Reviewer: Kate Herbert

A country must reflect it own culture and history through its art. Return to the Brink is a valiant attempt to represent, on stage, one incident in our history.

Between 1838 and 1846, Governor Gipps (Paul English) sent to trial twice, eleven convicts and ex-convicts who slaughtered twenty-eight aborigines at Mile Creek. In spite of their confessions, all are acquitted in the first trial. Seven are convicted in the second.

Novelist, Rodney Hall, writes what is essentially a series of expository dialogues between powerful people of the NSW colony. They are the mouthpieces for differing viewpoints rather than actors in the central drama of either the murders or trial.

Gipps is serious, honest, efficient and compelled to institute British law: the elimination of the convict system, collection of land tax and the stopping of murder of the natives. Wentworth (Andrew S Gilbert), a landowner who values land and capital over native human life, opposes him.

Colonel Campbell, (Lewis Fiander) once an intelligent, coherent man, suffers Alzheimer's. He wants to see right done and knows that the army was responsible for the order to kill. Quinn (Greg Stone), newspaper reporter, is the voice of public opinion and Gipps' assistant Hooke (Simon Wilton) changes allegiances with the wind. Mrs Campbell (Jackie Kelleher) is the voice of the colonial wife.

The strongest scenes are late in the middle of the play when tension rises and we begin to care what happens. However, the "confession" of the colonel and the appearance of the escaped, guilty young officer(James Wardlaw) are never pursued.

Director, Bruce Myles and most actors keep the space as dynamic as possible but the characters are not three-dimensional. Paul English is a potent and emotional presence as Gipps, a man described as humourless. Judith Cobb's design, set in the round on a dried blood coloured wooden "O" evokes the bloody deaths of the natives.

The issues and premise of this play have dramatic potential but the didactic, descriptive nature of the dialogue interrupts any dramatic tension. It is unclear whose story it is, noone is changed in the process of the narrative and there are no surprises.

The peculiar and inappropriate final scene berates us with the reflection that we are all responsible. We do not need to hear the entire phone book of European names read out to understand this.

by Kate Herbert

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