Savage River

Company: Griffin Theatre Company with Melbourne Theatre Company and Tasmanian Theatre Company SBW Stables
Venue: SBW Stables, Kings Cross, Sydney
Dates: To 18 July2009

Into the wild

Savage River is set in a remote area on the west coast of Tasmania; “Hour–north from Zeehan. A ways south of Arthur River. Savage is two hours east... (and west?) The Republic of South Africa.” Kingsley (Ian Bliss) , a deeply, psychologically, injured man, has fled with his half caste son, Tiger (Travis Cardona) to the wilderness, in an attempt to protect the boy from the prejudices of ‘civilization’. Tiger has been brought up a relatively protected ‘wild child’. Nature and its bountiful gifts are his principal knowledge. Television, The Three Stooges and mid-night movies and cooking shows creating a curiosity for the other world, through an old television set in the camp. Into this world is brought Jude (Peta Sergeant), by Kingsley. She, like him is an injured ‘soul’. The collision and the naive interactions of these fractured characters is the body of the play.

The play is, relievedly, straightforward - an old fashioned “melodrama”. There is no strain to follow the meaning of the play. No puzzle as to who these people are. It is a play that has clear form: two acts, made up of twelve scenes (with an interval – how old fashioned can you be?) with characters that have gentle psychological and narrative progress – building all the time.

The director, Peter Evans has elicited a naturalistic production. Giving the actors the opportunity to breathe in the spaces between the lines and their situations. It is the acting choices that give a contemporary edge to the witnessing of the piece. Peta Sergeant is oddly uncomfortable to watch, as the pain of the character’s external and internal struggles register painfully, truthfully, across all of her instrument. The anguish and uncertainty of identity is contrasted with the bravado of action in the safety of alcoholic haze or in the ordinary doing of house making (curtains etc).

The tenderness towards the young Tiger and the flailing endeavours to deal with the dangerous Kingsley provide a range of intriguing responses for the audience. They flicker across her face and body like electric shocks. Travis Cardona as the ‘wild child’ held captive in this wilderness paradise treads a pathetic line between the glorious nature of the wisdom of nature in the child and the struggle for a fuller knowledge of the real world, to become a man: it could be the loss of an innocent or the liberating of a spirit- the ambiguity of my response to the character’s journey is challenging. After the confrontation with his father “I’m goin’. To see everythin’. I won’t be chained. I won’t be buried anymore.” And his assurance “I’ll be okay.” buffets with the romantic but maybe tragic image of Tiger standing on his swing above the river, his arms raised like a bird, squawking like a seabird, laughing, “free”. How free when he enters the environs of Zeehan and the bigger world, one wonders? Ian Bliss creates the neurotic and paranoidal danger of an injured man, the rages of frustration and threat of violence, balanced by a final effortful restraint of civilized behaviour. It is full of tension making experiences for the audience. The threat is ugly and the restraint is unexpected. All three characters like the Savage River of the title of the play, register the possibilities of the multi-faceted nature of man; savage and noble.

The designer, Stephen Curtis, has created a redolently atmospheric bush hut on the black shale and pebbles of a river bank. The sound design (Kelly Ryall) and especially the beautiful and hauntingly romantic composition, cinematic in dimension (Jed Kurzel), provide great support for the essentially old fashioned story telling .It gives dimension and depth to the experience. The lighting (Daniel Zika) is similarly romantic in it’s support.

It is wonderful to sit beside an audience that registered its pleasure and confidence about having had a shared experience that they had no equivocations about. There was a confident beaming in the faces of the exiting audience. They expressed a joy of the possibility of a world, that with all of it’s problems, still may have solutions that give substance to the simple virtues of hope and charity. Old fashioned but highly satisfying theatre. I recommend it.

Kevin Jackson

To read more of Kevin Jackson's theatre reviews, check out his blog at Kevin Jackson's Theatre Reviews.

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