The Secret River

This year Sydney Theatre Company revisits their 2013 production of The Secret River, the first commission made by then co-Artistic Directors Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton. The play, adapted by Andrew Bovell from Kate Grenville's novel, is brought to life by director Neil Armfield, who invites Nathaniel Dean back as protagonist William Thornhill.

Dean is the centre of this play, the driving force, the central point of tension — he is torn between his urge for a place of his own in the country to which he was exiled, and his wife, as played by the reserved, vulnerable, yet stoic Georgia Adamson, who wishes to return to the London which cast them out. But the real central tension of the play is that between Thornhill and the Indigenous Dharug people who live on the land which he has claimed as his own. The violent struggle at the play's end, superbly brought to life by musician Isaac Hayward and the cast, is inevitable and powerful — a confronting representation of a historical truth colonisers have painstakingly tried to forget.

But it can't be ignored, and this production won't let it be ignored — the use of flour to depict gunshots fired, and the collapsing of the women, children, elders the audience, and Thornhill's own son, have come to adore, each performed as separate actions, highlight just how savagely violent the attempted destruction of an entire culture was (is?), and the place it has in our past, present and future.

The production is vividly brought to life not only by the cast, especially our narrator Dhirrumbin, played by Ningali Lawford-Wolf, but by the aforementioned Hayward on cello and piano; Artistic Associate Stephen Page, whose influence can be seen in the rhythm and style of movement across the stage; Lighting Designer Mark Howett who projects the lapping of the river current onto the scene; and Set Designer Stephen Curtis, whose eucalyptus tree overshadows the action.