Inner Voices

Inner Voices follows the rise of intellectually disabled Ivan from prisoner to King Ivan VI of the Russian throne, aided (or rather, forcibly manipulated) by a gluttonous Russian officer. What follows is a strange epic of duplicity and mistreatment.

Phil Rouse gives the audience a lot to think about with his ambitious production. His staging is powerful, the design is complex, and the cast are phenomenal. These elements surely mean that the play was a roaring success? Not quite — not unequivocally. Louis Nowra's script throws a spanner in the works, and a script isn't something you can ignore. It's difficult and by no means immediately relevant or easily understood. The effect of this tension between the script's difficulty and the otherwise utter competency of the production is an echo — it's an echo in the audience's mind after they leave the Old Fitzroy's basement theatre; it's an echo that repeats the play again and again, never affording an easy answer as to what it really meant here and now in the Sydney of 2016. This struggle it generates, though, is of great credit to Don't Look Away Theatre Company. Its raison d'etre is to revive and reinvigorate 'lost' Australian works. These works are forgotten sometimes due to difficulties of staging, and the battle to make them contemporary and relatable should be seen as a token of pride for Don't Look Away.

The primary enjoyment of the night (apart from this fascinating tension) was the acting. Every role: tragic, melodramatic or authentically heartfelt, was performed with an energy and attention to detail that small to medium theatre companies so often strive for but miss. Every actor must be congratulated here.

A note now, before ending, on the Director's Note. Instead of justifying any of the staging or design, Rouse chose to write about the government's financial gutting of the Australia Council. Inner Voices opened on the national day of action in the arts and he asked his audience to stand with him, his actors, and his company in supporting small and medium theatre companies. These moves are essential at such a time. And to conjoin them with such an interesting production deserves adulation.