by Garrie
Hutchinson
La Mama until April
25, 1999
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert
There is a horror in
hearing spoken, the experiences of victims of war. When we see footage of
individual Kosovo refugees speaking of their pain, loss and grief, it touches us
in a way no war correspondent's report can.
Sleepers by Garrie Hutchinson is directed and designed by
James Clayden. This is a piece of documentary theatre about the World War Two
Prisoners of War who were abused by the Japanese.
Documentary theatre is an inadequate description of this
work. It is an almost visceral experience of the atrocities visited upon our
men in Singapore, Changi, Malaysia and on the Burma railway.
Clayden allows the 'written evidence' of soldiers, including
Colonel Weary Dunlop, other Australians and several Japanese, to speak for
itself. There is some narration by "The traveller" who represents
Hutchinson himself who travelled this route in 1997 and the stage directions
are spoken aloud to alienate us even further.
Clayden's production is visually and vocally economical
using only a transparent gauze army tent as a set and focussing on voice,
slides, film and movement. Images of grave sites, jungle and the death march
are projected onto scrim and performers. Bryony Marks’ pulse of sound
accompanies the piece.
Performer, Peter Green spends the entire hour inside the
tent, referring to notes, reading text, moving gently and quietly inside his
mosquito net world that could be his a prison or his army headquarters. Dancer,
Shelley Lasica, shifts around the edges of the tent, creating abstract shape that
is often simply distracting.
It is Green's almost emotionless delivery that heightens the
horror of the images. One soldier decided to be dead during his incarceration;
"I would remain dead until the departure of the Japs."
The relationships between prisoners and the Japanese were
complex. One Japanese, "feared the prisoner would be killed in my
presence." An Australian sees his Japanese interrogator as "a hated
intimate."
We are confronted with gruesome details of a beating that
left a man broken and blackened after 900 blows, or of men with ulcers infested
with insects and no bandages. "I am amazed that one could bleed so much
and still be alive," says one soldier. "There is a lot to grumble
about," understates another.
We marvel at the capacity of body and mind to continue under
such hideous conditions and even to heal and survive. Sleepers is a poignant,
moving and chastening experience.
By Kate Herber
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