Corrugation Road
Jimmy Chi, Kuckles and Pigram Brothers

Black Swan Company
Playhouse

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

For Black Swan it is another Bran Nue Dae. After the boisterous success of Jimmy Chi’s discursive account of growing up in Broome, the company is now freewheeling down Corrugation Road. As the title suggests, it is a rougher ride this time as Chi -with a lot of help from musical friends, Kuckles and the Pigram Brothers- recounts his painful encounter with schizophrenia, agoraphobia, sexual neurosis and the terrors of institutionalisation. Not too many laughs there, you might think, and, of course, you’d be right. But at its heart Jimmy’s gospel is just that- good news. It may not quite be a yellow brick carriageway but Corrugation Road points resolutely towards recovery and renewal.

The curving backdrop of Steve Nolan’s set is ambiguous – the natural colour tones suggest the subtropical canopy of the North West coast but the openly visible scaffolding reminds us that events are taking place in the confines of a mental hospital. The opening scene is a night terror. The central character Bob Two Bob is falling slo-mo from an ocean boat, writhing hands reach out for him, wailing voices call out for him but he is beyond their grasp as he tumbles through the regulation-effects fog into a stage trapdoor. It is a rather hokey impro workshop set piece but like Bran Nue Dae before it, Corrugation Road is capable of sudden shifts from theatrical banality to moments of real pathos.

The succession of images is both ludicrous and startling as Chi’s various preoccupations thread into each other. A nativity scene in a mental hospital has patients jumping about like the chorus from Marat Sade, the nurse looks like Betty Boop and the doctors, Fruitcake and Basketcase, are the Siamese twins of modern psychiatry performing such cod G-and-S lines as -“we are trained in Modern Pharmacology/And when something works we say ‘bugger me.'”

Some twenty seven songs form the spine of the show and chart disturbing mood swings from I’m as Happy as Larry to Suicidal Blues and Siren Song. The tunes are a lively amalgam of country pop, reggae and gospel blues and in their freedom of idiom give the production its freshness and confidence. It is tempting to draw comparisons with that other musical about inner space, Hair, with its trippy, impressionistic time jumps and rapid shifts of emotion.

Much recognition is due to the fine central performance from Stephen Baamba Albert, also the mainstay of Bran Nue Dae. As Bob Two Bob he gives a memorable account of psychotic illness. His gestures have a ritual simplicity as he repeatedly cradles his head in unassailable pain. As in Bran Nue Dae , director Andrew Ross negotiates a fine line between stage cliche and genuine feeling and Albert, along with Josie Ningali Lawford as Fiona, understands this well.

And Jimmy Chi also knows when its time to give things a lift. Having depicted Bob’s immobility and despair – heart-rendingly epitomised in the unabashed gospel strains of Lay Me in the Arms of Jesus and Heal Me O Risen Lord- Chi makes a quirky narrative leap to get everyone on the road, and the waves, back to Christmas Island. Nurse, says Bob in his best TV surgeon voice, a chainsaw. She duly hands one over and in a trice Bob slices the Siamese shrinks back into their constituent selves and everybody heads out on the Corrugation Road.

The impulse to resist such contrivance is soon relinquished as the show heads to a pacy finale of celebration and healing. Lost families are reunited, lovers are teamed up, even one of the doctors finds a gay partner -drolly serenaded in the song Quintessential Man. Some of the strongest songs come at the end – Salt Water Cowboy and the raucous Indigine where every form of ethnic dance -from tribal Aboriginal to Cossack, Irish jigs to Thai ceremonial- is hilariously demonstrated.

Like Bran Nue Dae, Corrrugation Road is the result of a unique mix of talents- performers like Stephen Albert and Josie Ningali Lawford, Gary Cooper, Trevor Jamieson and Becky Brown, musical director Ian Grandage, choreographer Anna Mercer, composers Kuckles and the Pigrams and shrewd direction from Andrew Ross. But behind all this is the quirky, tenacious vision of Jimmy Chi, blending cultural observation and personal witness in the most extraordinary and disarming ways. There was never a show quite like Bran Nue Dae and, just when we needed something to help us through a bumpy period of racial tension and cultural dyspepsia, along comes Corrugation Road.

The Adelaide Review February, 1997.