Carboni by John Romeril. Renato Musolino as Rafaello Carboni, directed by Peter Dunn. Tuggeranong Arts Centre in association with the National Multicultural Festival, February 11-15 8pm.
Rafaello Carboni stayed up on watch at the Eureka Stockade over Thursday and Friday nights. By midnight Saturday December 2, 1854, his need for sleep overcame his dedication to the cause of defence against the expected troopers. He, as Peter Lalor's valued interpreter - he spoke 6 languages - was allowed to leave the stockade while things seemed quiet, only to be awakened by gunfire at dawn.
What sense of guilt he must have felt, being forced merely to watch while 20 of his mates were killed and some twice that number left injured, all for the sake of their objection to the Victorian Government's demand, enforced by constant police harrassment, that they pay a licence fee to dig for gold at Ballarat.
Surviving a false charge of treason, Carboni wrote his record of these seminal events in Australian history in a book The Eureka Stockade, was elected a member of the local court in Ballarat, and later returned to Italy where he marched alongside Garibaldi.
Romeril's play, though rather theatre-in-education in style, gives us Carboni the writer, political activist, and defender of the barricades - often rather melodramatic in speech and mannerisms, but a sincere and clear thinker. The result is a perfect multicultural festival presentation. Those 6 languages were needed at Ballarat 150 years ago, and his lack of Chinese was a severe frustration for Carboni.
Musolino performs the play in an Italian translation as well as English. I felt I needed to experience more complexity of emotion in Carboni's character in the English version I saw, but an Italian speaker at the all-Italian opening night was very impressed with the powerful effect of the play in that language, where its strength lay in a dramatic story-telling tradition. For me the action was rather too slow and studied, yet this style gradually built to a strong ending and a clear understanding of the brutal reality of the massacre.
The visual design by Casey van Sebille was a strength of this production: clever back projections reinforced the story and the theme very effectively. The Southern Cross flag now has much greater meaning for me.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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