This solo work, written and brilliantly performed by Chris Pitman, explores how, in our midst, the lives of many are beached and marooned.<\/p>\n
Written by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
\u201cI have tried to write a version of this story for many years but was never quite able to finish. A solitary figure, unable to connect, abandoned at the edge of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Shore Break<\/em> Chris Pitman has undoubtedly succeeded with this succinct monologue which crests and breaks like the intimidating waves it so vividly invokes.<\/p>\n This richly metaphoric, but also forensically realistic, account of a young man\u2019s diminishing destiny begins in a classroom. Our unnamed narrator is describing his English class. The hapless teacher, Budgie, is desperately trying to imbue disaffected schoolboys with a sense of the splendour and perils of existence.<\/p>\n He wants them to learn poetry by heart that will stay with them in later life. One particular poem \u2013 \u201cThe Lure of the Desert Land\u201d by Madge Morris, describes an overwhelming \u201csoundless fury\u201d hiding the world and quenching the sun leaving \u201cJust you, and your soul and nothing there.\u201d<\/p>\n For our anti-hero this existential isolation is not in the desert but on the edge of it \u2013 \u201cwhere it meets the sea\u201d, giving way \u201cto this scrubby flat-arsed dune.\u201d<\/p>\n A longtime surfer and beach dweller himself, Pitman is intrigued by those boon companions with their boards and their pursuit of the perfect wave. It is such an Australian theme. The Endless Summer, the bleached, tanned hedonism that captured young people especially in the 60s and 70s, is both a glorious example and a clich\u00e9 of the Australian idyll.<\/p>\n But for a young man dropping out of school, at odds with parents defeated by life, and with few prospects in a privileged world, the beach is also a kind of last resort. It is his father, continually stoked on alcohol and withdrawn into mute isolation, who introduces our narrator to the mystery and grandeur of the surf, of pitting oneself against the dangers and glories of the ocean. Not that he joined in. He left him by himself- to sink or swim- and headed to the pub instead.<\/p>\n In Brink\u2019s outstanding production, Chris Pitman has not only written (in collaboration with co-directors Chelsea Griffiths and Chris Drummond) an exceptional play, but performed it splendidly. Pitman has featured memorably in productions ranging from a long stint in Cloudstreet<\/em> to recent triumphs in Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em> and The Dictionary of Lost Words.<\/em> But here he has excelled even further.<\/p>\n In the Space, the simple set (devised by Pitman) consists of a rectangular rough coir mat, a folding beach chair, a plastic crate draped with a wet suit, beach towels and a white surfboard. Bathed in buttery summer light by the excellent Sue Grey-Gardner, it is theatre at its most rudimentary and immediate. No soundscapes, no shifts of d\u00e9cor, projection screens, or music. It is an actor with his text.<\/p>\n In a tan t-shirt, jeans and bare feet, Pitman sits in his chair, sometimes sanding his surfboard, telling a story which is an amalgam of memories, observations, and imaginings. His delivery is relaxed, laconic, droll. It is understated and restrained, drawing us closer. Bringing us into his confidence, telling it, often amusingly, like it is.<\/p>\n When he later reveals the dark path of prison and violence, and his ultimate desolation confronting his torments, Pitman is compelling, never straying into bombast or false emotion. The performance is astutely weighted, never too ocker (to dredge up a lost term) and effortlessly carrying the ambition of its metaphor, and social and psychological commentary.<\/p>\n He introduces a range of characters, all of them shrewdly and deftly drawn. His father, retreated into silent anger and defeat, sitting at the table every night but never really there, his mother determinedly vibrant and earthy but vacant all the same, Kate his one real chance at love \u2013 lost, as he replicates his father\u2019s misanthropic dissociation.<\/p>\n Like a bogan Beckett character, Pitman\u2019s creation knows the world is \u201ccooked\u201d but has no words or strategies to counteract. Except on his surfboard. When he enters that epicentre of towering ocean wave motion, navigating that tunnel, that \u201cfree ride through the barrel\u201d. That is when he triumphantly posits balance and perfection against chaos and failure.<\/p>\n Shore Break<\/em> is a most welcome inclusion in State Theatre\u2019s Stateside umbrella program. There has always been a distinctively Australian version of inarticulate rage and emotional locked-in syndrome- in multiple generations of men, and it is more destructively evident than ever. In an engaging, accessible, and insightful 75 minutes, Chris Pitman has put words to the inarticulate suffering and damage of many.<\/p>\n This production has much to say and deserves a touring life well beyond this limited season. In the meantime, there are still four more performances. Don\u2019t miss out.<\/p>\n Shore Break<\/em> continues in the Space until September 7.<\/p>\n