Written by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
With thrift and wit and unnerving candour, Theatre Republic\u2019s intriguing new play examines in microcosm the inescapable reality of discrepant worlds and insufficient good intentions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis play has never been comfortable,\u201c Emily Steel writes in her program notes for The Garden<\/em>. \u201cIt was uncomfortable to write and if I\u2019ve done it properly it will be uncomfortable to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n And she has done it properly. In a compact sixty minutes she has produced a crowded hour of questions and perspectives that are gnarly and unsettling. It is not preachy or admonishing, instead, Steel, with her genial gift for small, familiar, sometimes amusing, but very telling detail, presents us with two people who share the same garden but come from different galaxies.<\/p>\n Evelyn is the co-ordinator of a community garden project, a task she manages along with a young child, a mostly absent husband, and a fractious group of fellow diggers \u2013 all cultivating organic principles designed to return harmony and regeneration to an abused and ravaged planet.<\/p>\n Into her domain walks Adam. He is an aged care worker, a refugee separated from all other family, and he is African. The conversation is awkward. In her haste to be welcoming, (and also exploit the funding possibilities of ticking \u201cInclusive\u201d on the application) Evelyn falls into a series of gaffes, wrong assumptions, and stereotypes.<\/p>\n They have different notions about gender roles, family, and especially the pragmatic realities of subsistence food production. There is banter, and some warmth, but Steel is not going to gratify our wish for easy resolution. It takes a little while for us to realise that this is not that kind of play.<\/p>\n Theatre Republic director, Corey McMahon has again produced a brisk, deftly integrated production. Meg Wilson\u2019s set, consisting of a decking floor and raised wooden garden beds with a part-finished wooden slat and wire fence, provides an earthy but well-resourced reality, sumptuously lit by Chris Petridis. The pastoral effect is enhanced by James Oborn\u2019s sound design of budgies and bees (the latter transforming into a thunderous swarm at a later point.) The musical interludes, from the always-interesting Jason Sweeney, also contribute to the misplaced notion of Adam and Eve(lyn) in some kind of organic Eden.<\/p>\n The performances are brave and excellent. The characters are complex, flawed and not always likeable. Elizabeth Hay, as the frazzled Evelyn, is amusing when reminding her husband that it\u2019s not called babysitting when he\u2019s the father. But when her earnest efforts to connect to Adam fall into all sorts of ignorant racial and cultural assumptions we begin to cringe because that could well be our own blunders.<\/p>\n How little we know of our fellow citizens, how much we surmise by crude cultural profiling and presumption. Hay\u2019s Evelyn is cheery, cranky, angry – and fleetingly aware that her efforts to be a good global citizen, like our own, are too often tokenistic and futile.<\/p>\n Rashidi Edward is compelling as Adam. When he questions Evelyn about the rules and \u201cfreedoms\u201d of the community garden his interrogations reveal the contradictions and follies of the concept. Which community does it refer to ? And what does family mean when the aged are put into care and young children are separated from their parents ? Edward\u2019s Adam has views that don\u2019t sit easily in the community he is now in and he is angry and alienated by this.<\/p>\n These are the deep discomforts and unexamined contradictions Emily Steel is probing and exposing in this challenging play. It could be said that she has only given us Act One. And in Act Two we would have been supplied with a closer intertwining of purpose between our characters, bringing a gradual harmony and resolution to these spiky differences and difficulties. The usual narrative arc mending we have come to expect.<\/p>\n But instead we have to take them home with us, to ruminate on and try to understand them better.<\/p>\n And this in a week when we have matters of disturbing national and international consequence to ponder. Such as a referendum on a very modest proposal for a First Nations Voice blindsided by political opportunism. Or a mutually inflicted mass atrocity which is still unfolding for two million people in a confined community called Gaza.<\/p>\n Corey McMahon called The Garden<\/em> \u201ca big little play.\u201d It has very current connections and reverberations – and well deserves our attention.<\/p>\n The Garden<\/em> is playing at the Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre until October 14.<\/p>\n October 12, 2023 InDaily<\/p>\n https:\/\/indaily.com.au\/arts-culture\/theatre\/2023\/10\/12\/theatre-review-the-garden\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Murray Bramwell With thrift and wit and unnerving candour, Theatre Republic\u2019s intriguing new play examines in microcosm the inescapable reality of discrepant worlds and insufficient good intentions. \u201cThis play has never been comfortable,\u201c Emily Steel writes in her program notes for The Garden. \u201cIt was uncomfortable to write and if I\u2019ve done it properly it will be uncomfortable to watch.\u201d And she has done it properly. In a compact sixty minutes she has produced a crowded hour of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,17,5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-45","category-adelaide-companies","category-archive","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3541,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540\/revisions\/3541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}