The Season. By Nathan Maynard. Directed by Isaac Drandic. A Tasmanian Performers Production. Managed by Performing Lines. The Playhouse. Canberra Theatre Centre. Until September 15. Bookings: 62752700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
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Every year about March, the mutton bird makes the arduous flight from the far regions of the Northern Hemisphere to the breeding grounds of Australia, where they nestle to recuperate and hatch their chicks in the burrows of the sandy beaches. Many of the older birds perish, while the young gather their strength for the perilous return flight to the North.
In Indigenous playwright Nathan Maynard’s The Season, the plight of the seawater bird stands as a metaphor for his people’s past and present struggles and hopes for the future. The age-old tradition of the extraction and killing and plucking of the birds may appear cruel. The analogy, however, of Maynard’s tale of the Duncan family’s traditional gathering on Dog Island in Tasmania’s Bass Strait becomes clearer when Clay, the youngest member of the family, is initiated into the extraction of the bird, which he then returns to the burrow as the family looks on with proud approval.
Like many new plays emerging from the creative talents of young contemporary Indigenous playwrights, The Season is a work of refreshing honesty, totally natural in the actors’ performances and salutary in its unaffected and joyful portrayal of the mob. The Duncans are a family like any other and yet born of a culture, tradition and experience vastly different to many others.
Ben (Maitland Schnaars) is the family custodian, passing on the traditions to the younger generation. Stella, his wife (Della Rae Morrison), is the family matriarch, still observing the roles of mother and nurturer, while coming to terms with a revelation from her daughter Lou (Nazaree Dickerson), who is the mother of Clay (James Slee). Son Ritchie (Mathew Cooper), assumes the mantle of inheritor of the traditional roles and master of the rookery. Lisa Maza’s Aunty Marlene bears the burden of past secrets and frustrated desire, while Trevor Jamieson doubles as the absurdly comical and sex-starved Neil, as well as a conscientious senior ranger, straddling the potential conflict of observance of the white man’s laws and his people’s customs.
Isaac Drandic’s fluid direction on Richard Roberts’s liberating open stage design is theatrically inventive and astute, capitalizing on the script’s delicious, cheeky and infectious humour and Maynard’s inclusion of jubilant dance and song. Rachel Burke’s atmospheric lighting and Ben Grant’s accompanying composition and sound design effectively heighten the production’s mood and thought-provoking impact.
The Season is not only a deadly comedy. Moments of pathos are all too poignant as Ben reflects on the clipped wings of Time or Aunty Marlene contemplates her silent regret. These are the shared experiences of all humanity.
Whatever the struggle, it is the overpowering and hopeful spirit of family and community that reverberates throughout Tasmanian Performers’ deadly funny, touching and joyously uplifting production of The Season.
