Sally Sara's debt play takes the term "write what you know" to extremes - a drama about a returning foreign correspondent who finds the rhythms normal life a challenge after years away covering the events in Afghanistan, it uses simple staging and a set of strong performances to devastating effect. It's impossible not to take a work like this as being deeply, profoundly personal, and Director Anna-Louise Sarks and her production team bring the work to life very strongly.
Designer Robert Cousins provides a nicely neutral, white space for the story to be enacted - a sheet of blankspace with a screen behind for projections as required. We start on the streets of Afghanistan, seeing reporter Suzie doing her day-to-day work on the streets, accompanied by a friend doing a puff piece about her and her Afghani translator. As she returns home we find her uncertain about how to handle day to day life but presenting the strong competent façade to friends, family, and ultimately a therapist, meanwhile helping her translator chase asylum in Australia. There's strong writing here, even though I'm not entirely sure the right choice on where to end the narrative was chosen (one of the underlying traumas turns out to be a lot more mundane and personal than the ones inherent in her place and location). Still, all central performances are strong - Sheridan Harbridge leverages her recent triumph in "Prima Facie" to create another tough professional young woman breaking under the weight of accumulated trauma, very different from her previous work but still with a great ability to show the faultines. Amber McMahon is an endearing best friend, honest and with her own issues to play against Suzie's dramas, Toni Scanlon is an engaging mum, very frustratingly perceptive in the best ways, Mansoor Noor as the translator is charming and endearing as he opens up to new possibilities on his arrival in Australia, and Deborah Galanos presents the therapist as practical, direct and never willing to take the back foot Suzie wants her to.
This is a new Australian play of unusual strength and it's directed with care and skill - design choices through the set, lighting and video design bring the narrative to life carefully and well. I was brought in and felt full after a strong theatrical meal.
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