Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney NSW), Jul 18 – Aug 12, 2023
Playwright: Tommy Murphy (adapted from the novel by Nevil Shute)
Director: Kip Williams
Cast: Matthew Backer, Tony Cogin, Michelle Lim Davidson, Emma Diaz, Vanessa Downing, Tai Hara, Genevieve Lee, Ben O’Toole, Contessa Treffone, Kiki Wales, Elijah Williams, Alan Zhu
Images by Daniel Boud
Theatre review
Even though the war had well and truly ended, devastation and trauma lingered in the minds of both victors and losers. Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach was published in 1957, 12 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans. It imagines a future in which a final explosion occurs in the Northern Hemisphere, with devastating effects of radiation gradually spreading across the entire globe, including Melbourne where we meet the characters of Shute’s story.
This new stage adaption by Tommy Murphy, feels as much a period piece as it does resonate with contemporary pertinence. The dialogue has a tendency to sound drily obscure, but Murphy’s astute condensation of events for his version, allows On the Beach to speak urgently to our modern sensibilities. Whether we associate the story with our renewed experiences of a pandemic, or with our present anxieties around technological advancements especially as it relates to artificial intelligence, the play taps into a sense of doom that seems perennially a part of being human, no matter the epoch.
That masochistic fascination with catastrophe is harnessed powerfully by Kip Williams, who directs the production with astonishing sophistication, connecting with our taste for the morbid, in quiet but intense ways. The narrative of On the Beach is a distant runner up to the gratification supplied by the atmospherics being administered, in a show that deals in the philosophy of certain death.
Michael Hankin’s set design bears a skilful precision that allows for a minimalist aesthetic to operate, using the vastness of empty space to trigger fears pertaining to notions of desertion and annihilation. Lights by Damien Cooper further enhance that sensation of isolation and of insignificance, that we understand subconsciously to be our minuscule piece in the real scheme of things. Costumes, delightful in a very 1950’s manner, are poised and hyper-gendered, as authentically crafted by Mel Page. Auditory pleasures are a real highlight of the staging, with music by Grace Ferguson delivering transcendent romance, along with Jessica Dunn’s sounds that keep us firmly in a space of mournful apprehension.
Excellent performances by the cast ensures our sensory, if not always emotional, investment into their show. Ben O’Toole brings a beautiful and captivating rhapsody to Peter’s increasingly maddening states of anguish. Mary’s dignity is kept intact by the illuminative Michelle Lim Davidson, who exemplifies a woman keeping it together, at the most challenging of times. Contessa Treffone is relied upon thankfully for the crucial lightening of mood, as the irrepressibly vivacious Moira. Dwight is played by a sensitive Tai Hara, every bit the old-fashioned matinee idol, but also unexpectedly touching at the right moments. Also noteworthy is Elijah Williams, whose turn as Swain gives the show some of its greatest poignancy, right when it matters most.
Grace and composure at critical junctures, even if they seem to provide no discernible function, are emblematic of the best of who we are. In this production of On the Beach, ugliness is worse than death, and is mercifully nowhere to be seen. Our tragedy is certainly of our own doing, and it is appropriate that we should endure it, with the utmost dignified serenity that can be mustered.
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