Upon hearing that I was going to see ‘The Long Way Home’,
friends who had seen it at the opening of the show the night before said to me,
‘I’ll be interested in your thoughts’. Immediately I presumed I would be
walking into a disaster zone, especially when I heard that most of the cast
were ex or current army personnel. Daniel Keene’s massaged and reinvented style
of verbatim play, as he describes it is “born out of the experiences of the
soldiers who will perform the play. They will play themselves re-imagined”. Oh
dear, I thought, can this work? Will the potholes of non-professional actors in
this play-as-therapy in exploring the transition of life upon returning from military zones become a trench
we are all destined to fall into?
In the first ten minutes I thought that potentially the
answer to that question was ‘yes’, especially when one performer could only read
his lines off the clipboard and declaim them out into the audience. Have we
asked too much of them? I mean how intimidating is it performing on the Sydney
Theatre stage in front of hundreds of mostly regular theatre-goers? Terrifying,
I would think.
And then, as the vehicle warmed up, this well written and structured
play of Keene’s, directed by Stephen Rayne, complete with humour, drama and
tension in all its vignettes fell into place and this rough diamond was a
breath of fresh air. It is authentic and faithful in its voices and stories and
more than that- it’s part catharsis, part educational and enlightenment and
always an engaging piece of theatre. Keene and Rayne have perfectly captured
the action in bite size, non-linear chunks and understood the rhythm and pace
in which to express each moment and experience on stage.
Contrast and collaboration lies at the crux of ‘The Long Way
Home’. Not only is there the mix of professional actors with military performers
but there is the world of the child’s perspective of war and its reality, of
monologues juxtaposed with the chorus of ghosts, with the aural assault of
heavy metal to the stony silence of isolation, of imagination and reality, of
the numbness and nightmares and of humour with drama. Keene and Rayne with the ensemble worked together throughout the process: interviewing, workshopping, and improvising until it was 'owned' by all in it.
I want to commend each and every performer in this show for
making me care about the plight of the returned soldier, especially the two men
taking on roles of our protagonists, Tim Loch and Craig Hancock. I want to
commend our professionals for creating roles that perfectly complemented these
voices. Tahki Saul’s series of lectures on understanding army jargon and the
chain of command were some of the most delightful moments on stage and I could
hear those with any military experience almost jump out of their seats with
glee at the expertly delivered satire.
Technically this play wheels in and out of the space like
the narrative itself and the brief video excerpts filmed and designed by David
Bergman added another layer of theatrical authenticity. Renee Mulder’s use of
the screens and projections, Damien Cooper’s lighting and Steve Francis’ sound
and compositions made sure this play had an injection of lightness that could
quickly be buried in the shadows of secrecy and noise.
I found the power of this play snuck up on me so by the time
I got to the last moments I was genuinely touched by the journey that had unfolded.
The homecoming stories of a life we can only but imagine have become part of a
contemporary public theatrical expression in ‘The Long Way Home’ and reminds us
that theatre is more than a staging of ideas. It is the medium for a discovery
of worlds unknown that we can now share that resonate our past, present and
future experiences and understanding.
This is community theatre at its best and
I am privileged to have seen it and I hope you can too.
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