Ten Days On The Island: This is Living

A striking quality of This is Living, Big hART’s latest production is the almost tangible sense of commitment and devotion from the cast. And this is no ordinary cast. With a core group touring from Wynyard, the theatre company’s home in North-West Tasmania, the majority of the performing troupe is gathered from the local area where Big hART touchdown and significantly engage with the community – in this case Glenorchy. For Ten Days on the Island festival the show also performs in small towns: LaTrobe, Franklin and Wynyard.

Last night on stage were 13 senior citizens in the low-lit foreground; three professional actors - Anne Grigg and Bruce Myles playing husband-and-wife team Morgan and Jan, and Lex Marinos playing Ron, their best friend, centre-stage and spot lit; and about 25 teenagers – some on skateboards – zooming out the back but mostly in darkness; as well as four-piece band, The Dunaways, in the mix.

Writer and director Scott Rankin presents a story of a breaking marriage, played out on a tilted wooden platform, which sits like a lone egg in the huge Derwent Entertainment Centre. The question beckons: why integrate these groups, portraying a generalised view of each juncture in life, particularly when they’re staged with physical and aesthetic segregation?

Sure, there’s the co-existence of life, at any one time and in any one community (though apparently skateboarding is not the teenage currency in Glenorchy, so extras toured from Wynyard). For the battling couple, the youth and the elderly allude to a contemporary version of their heyday and their future. And perhaps the grouping of the teenagers and seniors illustrates their flocking nature, while couples are a unit of two. But still it doesn’t click.

As a theatre piece it attempts too much, and consequently does not hang together. It gives it a shot with soft poetic layers of language echoing from the seniors; even offering marriage guidance, as they ghost-dance and weave through the drama, juxtaposing with short distant skate-ramp scenes blasting with head-banger music.

To contextualise, This is Livingis in its second year of evolution, and it’s what’s happening off-stage that’s nourishing for the community, and is hopefully yet to develop into a successful performance outcome. A similarly challenging Big hART project like Ngapartji Ngapartji, eight years in the making, has been critically celebrated.

Big hART projects take time and dare to truly connect with large groups of people, while aspiring to create high-quality theatre.

I would have preferred to see this show in a small-town community theatre or memorial hall, where the set would be more cohesive. The set, like the cast, tries to be everything. I nearly missed the projected images to the left and right of the stage, but glimpsed projections on costumes. In the enormity, ingenious roaming over-sized light bulbs were lost.

Yet amidst it all, I spotted a heart-warming vignette of a senior woman dancing with gloved hands while seated, and a delightful elderly man neat foot-shoe shuffling with white braces clipping up his trousers.

There was an enthusiastic applause from an audience roughly the same size as the cast bowing on stage. I watch with interest to see how This is Livingdevelops.

Ten Days On The Island: This is Living
Company Name: Big hART
Venue: Derwent Entertainment Centre
Dates: 30 & 31 March, 1 April at 7.30pm
Reviewer: Lucy Wilson Magnus