Charting the unknown

Brink Productions has a reputation for serious, sophisticated, well-crafted theatre outside of the mainstream, featuring Adelaide’s finest young actors and creative talent. This Uncharted Hour is a new work by South Australian writer Finegan Kruckemeyer, developed in collaboration with Brink.

Kruckemeyer is a gifted, mature playwright who imbues his elliptical, shifting narrative with moments of poetic beauty. Kruckemeyer knows the power of showing us what happens rather than simply telling us through exposition and monologue.

A young man walks uneasily into the centre spot, carrying the body of the dog he has just run over. This jarring accident is the stone cast into the pond, and its splash starts the ripples of memories and familial mysteries.

This Uncharted Hour is a domestic tragedy. It tracks the disintegration of a family who has struggled for years after the grief of a still-born child. The time moves between the present and the past as all the characters fight to control their unravelling lives. But it is a dirty fight, a losing fight with blood and scabs and weariness. The mother rages at her increasingly distant husband and refuses to let go of the memory of her dead child. Her husband seeks solace elsewhere and their ignored son flounders in the turbulent sea of his parents’ sadness.

Chris Drummond, Brink’s Artistic Director, directs This Uncharted Hour with subtlety and restraint. He elicits fine performances from his actors.

Nathan O’Keefe (Luka, the surviving son) brings a delightful freshness to the role: his performance is unstudied and unforced as if he is speaking his lines for the first time. Michaela Cantwell (Sarah, the husband’s mistress) shows the depth of her character’s loneliness and brittleness. In a play where there are few moments of humour, Cantwell has an engaging levity and directness. Her seduction scene with Paul Blackwell (Adam, the husband) and her monologue as the febrile video shop customer are superb.

Elena Carapetis plays the pivotal role of Penny, the damaged wife and mother. Carapetis is a fine actor; her performance traverses the guilt, anger and desperation of the anguished mother. Penny is aggressively inconsolable but desperate for consolation.

This Uncharted Hour suffers from earnestness and its emotional impact feels slightly lacklustre. This is the fault of the restrained direction and the script, but it constrains Carapetis’ performance: Penny’s rage - which is the emotional fulcrum of this play - is muted and unfulfilling. The play’s brevity also means some of the characters and their stories feel under-developed which makes them harder to sympathise with.

This is a minor quibble in an otherwise rewarding production. The live music (with Jamie Cook on piano and Emma Harwood singing beautifully) adds to the richness of the tragedy but is occasionally distracting.

This Uncharted Hour is a worthy new work with serious intent and excellent performances: see it.

John Wells

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This Uncharted Hour

Company: State Theatre Co of SA and Brink Productions
Venue: The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre
Dates: to 24 February 2007

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