La
Mama, Carlton, July 26 to Aug 13, 2006
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert
It is refreshing to
see a production illuminate a story with inventive theatrical conventions rather
than drown it in irrelevant imagery. Director, Kimberley Grigg, brings
imagination and skill to Three Oaks, by Monica Raszewski.
The audience is
seated on opposite sides of the space. The air is redolent with the scent of pine
needles, bringing to life the Polish forest of the characters’ childhood.
Actors play accordions
and violin on stage, evoking location, period, atmosphere and emotion. The
rhythms of the play are subtle and the acting fluid and skilful. Grigg interprets
the script seamlessly.
Raszewski
weaves layers of a family story, memories of a father, letters and paintings,
with Polish folk tales and history.
After the death of
her father, Janek (Adam Pierzchalski OK), Margaret (Janine Watson), an artist,
wants to retrieve some relics of his life in order to write a book. Janek, a Polish
migrant, married to Krystyna (Natalia Novikova), left the family when Margaret and
sister, Alex (Emily Taylor), were children. He made a new home with his
Australian lover, Alice (Fiona Macys).
Marc Raszewski’s design is compelling. Pierced by a pole are
three slabs of a tree standing on the bed of pine needles. Ladders rise out of
the pine floor, titling at precarious angles, representing the oak forest, creating
an obstacle course for the family and providing seats in scenes.
We are
agitated and moved by Margaret’s desperation to know her father after his death
when she so diligently avoided him before he died. She hunts for a painting she
believes her father did for her but finds only a few letters, some paintings, a
battered notebook, a recipe and some photos.
Memories
of her childhood collide with the present. We witness the alienation of mother
and father, the confusion of the sisters, their resistance to father’s lover,
the ordinariness of mother cooking and their Polish children’s songs.
Actors shift effortlessly
in the space just as ghostly memories filter in and out of Margaret’s thoughts.
The play is about memory
and a search for the truth. How do we reconstruct a person’s life and character
from fragments and memory?
Scenes around the
fractured tree trunk resonate with the Polish heritage of characters and writer.
Images of an old woman trapped in a tree and of Russian Kommisars torturing people
intersect the tale of the two children lost in the woods.
Three Oaks is an
evocative and theatrically satisfying production.
By Kate Herbert
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