1998: Ravens in Wonderland by Heaven Muecke

Ravens in Wonderland by Heaven Muecke.  National Film and Sound Archive Theatre, October 15 - 17, 1998, 8pm.   

    Muecke's work is unpretentious theatre.  Its success lies in its not pretending to be grand theatre; yet it is not insignificant by any means.  Ravens in Wonderland is the work of a young genuine writer / director in touch with the dark side of fairy stories which are all too easily sentimentalised.

    Rather than be drawn into the usual theatre groups - though recognising and appreciating her teenage experience in Canberra Youth Theatre - Muecke is an independent producer, working on this occasion with student colleagues with minimal financial support from the ANU Students' Association.  My sense is that she is right to work this way because her work is original and in a certain way whimsical.  Keeping control of the process from writing through directing the actors, creating the set, costumes and visual effects, including being technical operator, is a huge task even for a fifty minute piece; but it works for Muecke.

    Of course that means it works for us in the audience.  We are drawn quickly into a quirky wonderland.  We half imagine we recognise characters but, as they play out unusual reflections of a mix of stories, we are amused by unexpected incongruities which suddenly touch our deeper feelings about love and betrayal.

    Perhaps The Little Match Girl is the saddest story.  No-one will buy her matches; she can't go home, for her father will beat her; a nasty boy steals her shoes; in the morning she is found dead in the snow.  Muecke turns Hans Christian Andersen's character into a Coppelia-child, played very effectively by Rebecca Lathbury, whose humour and humanity links the disparate scenes of the play both structurally as a piece of theatre and emotionally as we enjoy her openness and recognise her naivete in ourselves.

    I found the play fascinating, and disturbing, for its absurdist - almost Dada - form combined with metaphorical suggestion in the language and the imagery.  I hope that Muecke keeps working and can find among the younger trained actors about town a compatible group with whom she can develop her work.  It's already well worth seeing and I look forward to more in the future.

© Frank McKone, Canberra