Kryptonite

The morning after watching Sue Smith’s Kryptonite, the Herald runs a front-page story about China’s role in Australian mines. It feels as though the play was written that afternoon, but director Geordie Brookman’s vision and the depth of performances by Tim Walter and Ursula Mills prove that’s far from the truth.
Oscillating between 1989 and 2014, Kryptonite follows star-crossed lovers Dylan and Lian – the former an environmentally-minded idealist lacking ideals but liking the idea of them, the latter one of the first wave of Chinese students at an Australian university.
As we watch them develop into international political and business players, their paths continually cross across the quarter-century – a rally at Sydney University, the Beijing Olympics – each time shift marked with water painted onto Victoria Lamb’s set.
The walled backdrop has a dark, rustic colour and in its simplicity is easily a hotel room or conference hall, an apartment or a classroom.
The wall quietly looms over the stage, suggesting all manner of other significant walls when considering relations between east and west, the cultural history of both nations; the Great Wall, Berlin...
It hides or protects something, the same thing, perhaps, that’s lodged deeply between Lian and Dylan, continuing to disrupt them and threatens to rupture.

Sydney Theatre Company Wharf 1, to 18 Oct