murraybramwell.com

July 07, 2006

Adelaide Theatre

July 6, 2006
Murray Bramwell

Unspoken
Written and performed by Rebecca Clark
Vitalstatistix and Performing Lines

Waterside, 11 Nile Street, Port Adelaide
July 5. Tickets $ 15 – 20. Bookings : 8447 6211
Until July 8.
Tower Theatre CUB Malthouse, Melbourne July 11-22
The Loft, QUT (Brisbane Festival) July 26 –August 5
(Bookings: QUT Gardens Theatre – (07) 3864 4455. Tickets: $18 -28.
Mackay Entertainment Centre, Mackay. Aug 8 -9
Riverway Arts Centre, Thuringowa August 11-12
Gladstone Playhouse, Entertainment Centre, Gladstone August 16
Walter Reid Cultural Centre, Rockhampton August 18 -19
Seymour Theatre, Sydney. August 30 – 16 September
Riverside Theatre, Parramatta. September 20-23

Rebecca Clarke’s Unspoken has had a very good word-of-mouth since it opened at Sydney’s Old Fitzroy Theatre in April last year. It attracted a Best Independent Production and Best Newcomer gong at the 2005 Sydney Theatre Awards and, now, Vitalstatistix in Adelaide is hosting the first leg of a national tour (sponsored by Performing Lines) which will take this exceptional debut performance to major centres and those parts of Central Queensland where Clarke’s intriguing and imaginatively constructed narrative begins.

In her program comments Rebecca Clarke is at pains to emphasise that her story is not autobiographical, but certain events undoubtedly pertain to her own life. As its title suggests, Unspoken is a disclosure, a declaration of things unsaid – and some things never to be said. There is nothing sensational in this lapse of discretion, only the kind of candour that leads to better understanding. Clarke’s story, told with crisp and admirably elliptical precision, describes the birth of her brother Julian, a late addition to a family, hitherto with an only child – Rebecca, aged fifteen. Julian’s profound birth defects leave him unable to walk and talk, entirely dependent on his parents and consuming their attention.

In Unspoken, Clarke entwines her account of feelings of resentment, frustration and apprehension at the arrival of such a complex sibling, with her own breakout into late adolescence at university and her first full-strength love affair with a fellow student she calls the Clown. Guided by original director Wayne Blair, and now, tour director Teresa Bell, this potentially mawkish material is turned into a highly memorable production.

With a stage set, by Genevieve Dugard, consisting of a slightly elevated wooden boardwalk and a half-raised boat sail, Clarke inhabits the stage with an energy and directness that is as believable as it is disarming. Her voice echoing against the cavernous and peeling walls of the Waterside theatre, Rebecca Clarke makes turbulent feelings vivid and coherent as she darts from one signal event to another – the alarming realisation as her brother is born, the sight of him tiny and vulnerable in her bath, her first day at uni – “scoping the lawn for dreamboats”, the first sexual experience. Then, also, disappointment in love, her text is tautly, urgently phrased – “I whisper hard into his heart”.

In Unspoken, Rebecca Clarke whispers hard from her own heart, but it is not cloying or manipulative. To use one of her own nautical metaphors, she reports a voyage which pushes her to the margins of her family, to young adulthood, to Europe, and then charts her return. She says in her notes that she is particularly fond of the poetic. It shouldn’t go without saying that Unspoken is exactly that.

The Australian, July 7, 2006.

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