{"id":2017,"date":"2017-03-11T04:43:32","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T04:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2017-03-11T04:43:32","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T04:43:32","slug":"the-secret-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/2017\/03\/11\/the-secret-river\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret River"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most people are familiar with\u00a0Kate Grenville’s\u00a0novel, published in 2005 and shortlisted for the 2006 Booker Prize. It features a convict called William Thornhill, a Thames boatman transported for life to New South Wales for stealing timber, whence he travels with his wife and two young boys and where, on receiving his absolute pardon, he sets his sights on a patch of land on the\u00a0Hawkesbury River north of Sydney and then has to contend with the indigenous people whose land he is purloining.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"20170309_114322\"
Nathaniel Dean (Thornhill) and Ningali Lawford Wolf (Dhirrumbin); Adelaide Festival programme<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was apparently the idea of\u00a0Cate Blanchett <\/strong>and Andrew Upton<\/strong>, then Artistic Directors of the\u00a0Sydney Theatre Company<\/strong>, to adapt the book into a stage play, for which purpose they hired the services of the playwright\u00a0Andrew Bovell.<\/strong> The result, realised by director\u00a0Neil Armfield<\/strong>, designed by\u00a0Stephen Curtis<\/strong> and set in a quarry outside Adelaide, is one of the most memorable nights I have ever spent at the theatre.<\/p>\n

Ms Grenville always stated she felt unable to tell her story from the point of view of the indigenous\u00a0people, which is why they are shadowy entities in her book – always there but not quite defined. The same is not the case in the play. The\u00a0Aboriginal people Thornhill is so afraid of are there in flesh and blood, speaking Dharug, the local language of the Hawkesbury – which, wisely I think, is not translated, so we the audience are as confused and perhaps as scared as Thornhill and his wife.<\/p>\n

The play is narrated by a character called Dhirrumbin (Dharug for the Hawkesbury\u00a0River). Played by Ningali Lawford Wolf<\/strong> she tells the story with a mixture of anger, regret and ruefulness. Never have I seen the misunderstandings between two cultures so vividly, humorously and ultimately tragically portrayed. When Thornhill in one scene confronts an Aboriginal elder and tells him forcibly to ‘go away’ the elder responds with what I assumed to be the same instruction in his own language, to which Thornhill replies, with relief, ‘Well at least we understand each other’. The massacre is portrayed twice: once from the white point of view, where we watch\u00a0an advancing line of men with\u00a0guns\u00a0puffing on white powder (flour I think) to portray the musket shots – a wonderfully imaginative moment. Then, separately, we see the Aboriginal people, children and women among them, drop one by one to the ground so all this is left is a single wounded Aborigine.<\/p>\n

The Anstey Hill Quarry, some distance out of Adelaide, is where the stone for the city’s first public buildings was excavated back in the 19th century. The play is set on a wide open stage with a painted floorcloth and a sheer cliff as backdrop. Live music is composed and performed by Iain Grandage<\/strong> on piano and cello, with the occasional addition of guitar and pipe; lights are set on scaffolding\u00a0on either side of the stage. All in all a magical setting you could say, enhanced by uniformly supreme performances from the entire cast.<\/p>\n

\"Secret
Theatre backdrop (photo by Tony Trench)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have a particular interest in the play of course as my own ancestors, featured in my book\u00a0The Worst Country in the World<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0<\/em>were granted land not far upstream from the fictional Thornhill* and his family, and at much the same time. They\u00a0were the lucky ones, they did not have to fight for what they considered their ‘official’ right to the land; which would not have made a scrap of difference to the indigenous local people of\u00a0course, to whom an interloper was an interloper.<\/p>\n

The subject of the British invasion of New South Wales is a sensitive one, to say the least. But with a mixture of humour, compassion and even-handedness this presentation\u00a0of\u00a0The Secret River<\/strong> achieves the near-impossible: by focusing on one family in one place at one time it manages to encapsulate the much bigger story of\u00a0western colonisation of Australia<\/p>\n

Miraculous. What I want to know now is when will we\u00a0colonisers have the chance to see this wonderful production back in the UK? National Theatre<\/strong>, I hope you are reading this.<\/p>\n

*Yet based loosely on Grenville’s great x 3 grandfather Solomon Wiseman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most people are familiar with\u00a0Kate Grenville’s\u00a0novel, published in 2005 and shortlisted for the 2006 Booker Prize. It features a convict called William Thornhill, a Thames boatman transported for life to New South Wales for stealing… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,18,29],"tags":[33,34,43,46,112,131,160,161,164,221,223],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}