Daily Review<\/p>\n
The Split
\nby Sarah Hamilton
\nHouse of Sand
\nRUMPUS, Sixth Street, Bowden, Adelaide.
\nOctober 24. Until November 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cJules and Tom are on an old fishing boat. They\u2019ve borrowed it. It\u2019s only pretty small. The anchor is down, so the boat just drifts as far as the anchor line lets it.\u201d These words are projected on to the back of the stark white set for The Split,<\/em> an intriguing new play from Melbourne writer Sarah Hamilton.<\/p>\n The scene is apparently idyllic. Jules and Tom are lazing in the sun. They have folding chairs, spread in a semi-circle around them are discarded jumpers, UV cream, a bottle of scotch, a champagne bottle on a long rope, and two mandarins. The boat is calm, or is it becalmed ? Are they marooned ? The maritime radio is turned off We don\u2019t really know where they are, or why. But do they know either ?<\/p>\n The conversation is languid and whimsical but there is an edge of anxiety. Talk of Doomsday people predicting something on the 23rd<\/sup> November. They ponder whether they could set up a green house on the boat to grow plants, or import soil to build an island. Things meander back and they slop UV cream on each other, play a game of snap and take a dip in the ocean. They talk about their half-remembered dreams, gaze at the stars, divert themselves with riddling word games, and take turns at testing and sometimes niggling the emotional anchor rope between them.<\/p>\n Director Charley Sanders and his company House of Sand<\/p>\n are drawn to theatre works that have a cryptic, often disturbing chaos in them \u2013 last year\u2019s excellent REVOLT, SHE SAID REVOLT AGAIN for example.<\/p>\n With The Split,<\/em> the discrepancies in tone are much more subtle and elusive. In the program notes he praises Hamilton for her sense of \u201cthe meditative, healing, loving hug that theatre can be.\u201d The playwright says the play \u201cis about love and change. It\u2019s about bearing witness and staying curious.\u201d<\/p>\n The often inconsequential banter in the text is a challenge for the actors and they rise to it. The performances are intuitive, intelligent and brave. Amy Victoria Brooks as Jules and Max Garcia-Underwood as Tom navigate the ebbs and flows of dialogue convincingly and well.<\/p>\n Undoubtedly some of the verbal interplay has come from rehearsal and perhaps some of the frog extrapolations and other whimsies could be wound back. But the uncertainties, the probing for secrets, the moments of insecurity and resentment are believably realised and well sustained. When Jules goes swimming out of sight and Tom fears she is lost, his panic is palpable.<\/p>\n This is a tightly managed production. Sanders creates space, and you might say courage, for this fragile text to unfold \u2013 it depends on the slightest strands of implication and could easily turn to cobweb. The open, vulnerable white space stage is used to good visual effect for Kobe Donaldson\u2019s subtle lighting tints and luminescent ocean projections. The sound design and composition from the excellent Mario Spate is again intuitively suited to the action and in the gathering final 20 minutes especially so.<\/p>\n The Split<\/em> is play which, perhaps like the frogs, is an early indicator of the anomie and dread that permeates into relationships in uncertain times. Climate Extinction is not mentioned directly but is quietly implicit. The besieged couple on their shaky boat in the middle of nowhere, no-one at the end of the radio, are hanging on to each other for dear life. As we watch this ambitious, but understated little play, we slowly realise that we all are.<\/p>\n FOUR stars<\/p>\n Daily Review, October 29, 2019<\/p>\n https:\/\/dailyreview.com.au\/the-split-review-rumpus-theatre-adelaide\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Daily Review The Split by Sarah Hamilton House of Sand RUMPUS, Sixth Street, Bowden, Adelaide. October 24. Until November 3. \u201cJules and Tom are on an old fishing boat. They\u2019ve borrowed it. It\u2019s only pretty small. The anchor is down, so the boat just drifts as far as the anchor line lets it.\u201d These words are projected on to the back of the stark white set for The Split, an intriguing new play from Melbourne writer Sarah Hamilton. 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