Signs Of Life is the second foray into writing for theatre by renowned novelist Tim Winton and his pedigree in that regard is certainly evident. Picking up a few years down the track from his novel Dirt Music, this four-hander is brimming with beautiful poetry and weighted one-liners. But words alone are not enough to carry a play and the problem here is that nothing much really happens.
Taking place over the course of a few days at an off-the-grid rural property in Western Australia (Zoe Atkinson's cracked and crow-footed landscape is manipulated and morphed through spectrums as though at the mercy of a real sun under Jon Buswell's impressive lighting) this land evokes ghosts.
For Georgie (Heather Mitchell), a toughened woman trapped in her own past, it is the ghost of her husband Lu, and George Shevstov haunts the stage as an awesome shamanistic figure in his portrayal of the role, visible and audible to those looking hard enough.
For the indigenous siblings who arrive on Georgie's property in a broken down Holden one evening, it is their father, a son, a nephew, the ghosts of an entire lineage erased. While both initially jarringly boisterous, Pauline Whyman soon settles into her role as the troubled sister and in tender moments shared with Georgie, Aaron Pedersen adds more depth to the character of Bender.
Ultimately these ghosts trap the production in a past beyond the audience and, aside from beautiful eulogies for land and loved ones, nothing much more dramatic than mild inconvenience of obligated hospitality occurs before us.
Running at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre to Saturday 22 December
