"What if water could speak?" asks we, the lost company. If water were a 20th century Australian, it would speak exactly as this spectacle does, for it is a spectacle, that unfolds for a most serene, quirky, and pleasurable 60 minutes.
Upon the newly renovated Old 505 scuttle hermit-performers. They are erudite, though they don't let on what they know. They are driven, though they seem bewildered. They are odd little beings that paint a picture of our Australian identity in a bizarrely accurate manner. Dragged upon stage by a rope is a sunburnt being with wide eyes, their head in a bucket, and their body contorted. Soon enough they are joined by another. Alternately interrupting and dictating the action is another being, wearing a blue swim-cap, and reminiscent in their costume of Christo's Wrapped Coast. These three are the scuttling hermit-performers that paint our Australia as they house themselves inside quintessentially white Australian artefacts: an esky, an umbrella, a surfboard.
Clockfire Theatre pitch this as its "most ambitious atmospheric to date". Their ambition has provided the stage with a cautiously lyrical meditation on water in our very local lives. The synthesis of poetics and verbatim interviews with and about Brett Whiteley granted the production a locus to anchor us in the exploration. The stage's action was pertinent to the theme for the entire performance. We felt lucky to witness the piece that Emily Ayoub, Madeline Baghurst, Alicia Gonzalez, Kate Worsley, Arisa Yura and Ben Pierpoint created. Never shall we see a Cornetto ascend to an idol of identity. We, the lost company is something special.
