THEATRE
Three Magpies Perched in a Tree ★★★
Glenn Shea, La Mama, till November 27
The primary instalment in An Indigenous Trilogy, a cycle of three First Nations performs carried out at La Mama this month, wrests lyrical and confronting theatre from the collision of historic and trendy, juxtaposing Dreaming myths with grim testimony from the coalface of our Aboriginal justice and baby safety programs.
Glenn Shea performs an avuncular Aboriginal social employee, for whom solely an escape to Nation gives respite from psychologically punishing work.
It’s hinted that he’s a member of the stolen generations – an expertise that galvanises him to endure stoically the shattered lives and heartbreaking circumstances he encounters, whereas sharpening his ambivalence at serving a system that has systemically failed Indigenous individuals and precipitated intergenerational trauma.
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Unvarnished anecdotes lay naked the size of drawback and misery, with gritty snapshots of marginalised Indigenous households and their run-ins with authorities narrated with agonised readability.
The circumstances run a gauntlet of drug dependancy, poverty, crime, and home violence and abuse, and although the employee does stage the odd poignant intervention, there’s a rising sense of helpless despair {that a} new stolen era is perhaps inevitable.
Balancing the modern trauma are Dreaming tales woven all through the piece.
They’ve the excellence of being narrated by the late Uncle Jack Charles, whose voice was a factor of magnificence, and there’s deep consolation to be present in listening to him draw out all of the knowledge and mischief in these Aboriginal creation myths. (Truthfully, the present can be value catching for these scenes alone.)