We were caught up in the storm tonight as STC delivered this Australian classic with finesse.
Storm Boy is a familiar tale of masculinity and man’s place in the elemental chaos that is the world as we know it. The play addresses isolation, love, loss, ancestry and growing up, and manages to negotiate these nobly – quite a feat given the casual smattering of bum jokes throughout to attract the younger audience. Storm Boy, his father, Hideaway Tom, and Fingerbone Bill create a trio with a fantastic mixture of easygoing witticism and relationship tension that engages the audience entirely for the 70-minute production.
Storm Boy is, at its base, a story of three men and a few pelicans all searching for their place in the group, and in the greater world around them. It’s epic and elemental, and easy to get caught up in the drama. Director John Sheedy, however, has curated a performance whose cautious restraint won us over. The grandiose issues are treated with a controlled, light tread that any theatre-goer would be proud to enjoy. The set, sparsely populated and wooden, creates poignant image after poignant image without tiring or trying too hard. A hand goes to the puppeteers of the pelicans that were, simultaneously, the manifestation of those elemental inevitabilities – storms, death, time, love – that Storm Boy fosters.
The directorship and images created between lights, puppets and staging make Storm Boy a unique and unexpected pleasure.
