Kate Mulvaney's adaptation of D'arcy Niland's 70 year old novel loses none of its essential qualities - the story of a rough-living man who's impulsive taking of his 9 year old daughter on the road after he discovers her mother in bed with the landlord, and how they find their way towards one another takes essential Australian mythos of solitude and independance and surounds it with the truths of how interdependant the human animal actually is. After adapting two works by Niland's partner, Ruth Park ("Harp in the South Trilogy" and "Playing Beatie Bow"), Mulvaney adapts the road-story into a piece for two actors backed by a six-strong ensemble - Josh McConville absolutely convinces as someone who's lived a long rough life but has deep passions coated with history, and Ziggy Resnick as the daughter is so fresh and innocent, open for anything and taken by sudden whims and surprisingly strong devotions.
The ensemble is full of gems too - from Paul Capsis, performing two roles I'd call Capsis specials (a Kings Cross torch singer and a wandering bush poet), to Mulvaney as two complicated maternal figures, Stephen Anderson playing a mix of threatening and friendly figures, Catherine Van-Davies as a lost love and another that Macauley finds on the road, Lucia Mastrantone and Aaron Pederson as various road eccentrics, they combine as narrators and create a wider world for Macauley and Buster's story to play out on, working in concert with Jessica Arthur's staging on Jeremy Allen's deceptively simple set (adapting to be both wide open plain and gathering places, country stores, byways, inner city slums, workplaces and friend's houses).
This is a story for the heart first and foremost, about human connection between a parent and a child, raw, strong and powerful. It's funny, incisive and tear-jerking in several places, but it's always honest and true about the people at the centre of the story.
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