The Boys by Gordon Graham.
Producers: Alchemy Artistic (Amy Kowalczuk), Shadow House PITS (Joe
Woodward) and Sophie Benassi. At the Australian Capital Theatre Hub,
Causeway Hall, Kingston, Canberra, April 13-16, 2022.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 16
Creatives:
Director/Designer: Amy Kowalczuk; Stage Manager: Carmen King; Production Manager: Alice Ferguson; Movement Director: Michelle Norris; Photographer: Mark Actually (Mark Kowalczuk); Set/Technical Advisor: Stephen Crossley; Sound Design: Neville Pye; Graphic Scribe: Arran McKenna; Lighting Design: Murray Wenham
Cast:
Sandra Sprague: Liz St Clair Long; Understudy: Alice Ferguson; Brett Sprague: Alex Hoskison; Glenn Sprague: Cole Hilder; Stevie Sprague: Blue Hyslop; Michelle: Meaghan Stewart; Jackie: Indy Scarletti; Nola: Caitlin Baker
_______________________________________________________________________________
Presenting The Boys
at Easter – based partly on the true story of the rape and murder of
Anita Cobby – is significant. Long before Christianity, Easter was a
European celebration of Spring, which is why we still treat it as a
holiday to be enjoyed, rather than as a commemoration of the death of an
innocent.
Of the five men found guilty and sent to prison for
life – without the possibility of parole – on 16 June 1987, Gordon
Graham imagines the family relationships of the three who were brothers,
aged 22, 28 and 33 at the time. “Sandra Sprague”, her three sons and
their women partners are fictional; public information about the
original Murphy brothers provides no clues about the women, if there
were any – as it must to maintain privacy.
The Boys
is about why the boys took part in the rape and murder; and what are
the roles of these four women – the mother Sandra; Michelle (with
Brett); Jackie (with Glenn); Nola (with Stevie). Essentially the
question is, could a mother and her sons’ sexual partners have changed
the boys’ attitudes and behaviours away from anti-women violence?
To
attempt to write this play is to take a great risk, perhaps of seeming
to disrespect women as weak if they can’t bring up boys better; or of
seeming to accept men’s sexism, belief in their own superiority and
right to be violent, as inevitable.
Or is ‘society’ to blame
for not ensuring all people live well above the poverty line; have
thorough family and medical support from birth through all the
vicissitudes of life until death; and have suitable education and
satisfying work?
It’s a big ask of a new local theatre company,
directed by Amy Kowalczuk, who many will know as Amy Dunham. I must
raise the possibility-of-bias flag, since I taught her parents, Kathleen
Montgomery and Trevor Dunham, in the first drama class at Hawker
College in 1976/77, when they directed, with Sue Richards, the first
student written and directed show – a rock/folk musical Anna. It’s great to see theatrical tradition continuing through the generations.
Has Amy made it work?
Indeed
she has. Being present for this in-the-round performance, reminded me
of country-town theatre in the local community hall – which is exactly
what the Causeway Hall (1926) once was when Kingston was still called
“Eastlake”, the first area settled in the new National Capital,
Canberra.
I was also not surprised, since Amy has acted and sung
in many shows (I’m sure I remember her singing at the National Folk
Festival as a teenager) and is now teaching Performing Arts, to find
myself watching what felt like a drama improvisation workshop, followed
by a debrief discussion – to wind down from the emotional intensity for
those watching as much as for those in the action. Here’s a top-class
teacher at work, I thought: the teacher as enabler, setting up the
situation for the actors to explore the theme of male violence against
women, using the awful Anita Cobby story as the stimulus.
The
sense of improvisation, oddly enough, makes the actors – in their
characters with personalities and background histories – seem real as
they say what they think and do what they want, in the room with us. In
the Q&A afterwards, everyone spoke about the fictional characters
as if they had really been there for the past two hours. Even in the
interval I found myself talking concernedly to someone nearby about how
the boys’ behaviour might be treated by a counsellor – or even if that
could be possible.
Of course, we all knew they were acting out a
playscript already written for them – and the rearranging of
“improvised” drama studio rostra blocks and other crude props as scenes
changed, kept our Brechtian distancing in place. A particularly
effective device was for the boys to almost dance together (or rather
against each other) between scenes, culminating in the scene which is
described in the script beginning with the oldest brother, Brett,
fighting the next brother down, Glenn, who Brett sees as challenging his
dominance. The youngest, Stevie, breaks down in frightening wild
movement, banging himself into the floor.
It was Amy Kowalczuk’s
directing of the acting, in close concert with Michelle Norris’ movement
directing that shaped the script (which I had had some doubts about on
my quick reading) into so much more than just an important play about a
worrying social issue. Watching, we became engaged directly in the
experience of Sandra, left by a husband, perhaps very like her
terrifyingly angry eldest, when her third boy was still very young and
who then only had eleven-year-old Brett as his model. The middle boy,
Glenn, seemed to have taken on some of Sandra’s demands about behaving
with respect for women – and had found some hope in Jackie. But in the
end he could not escape Brett’s power in the threesome, which must
always stick together against any authority, including their mother and –
now in their twenties plus – against all women, who they see as
restricting their freedoms and right to do as they please.
Finally, the right to abduct an innocent woman, rape her and kill her.
In
the discussion, the point was made that this behaviour is not
restricted to the poverty-stricken class, but can be seen throughout our
society including in corporate life and political life, up to the
violence in deliberate warfare. Putin is Brett in extremis, I thought,
as women and men spoke of their experiences and how the play had
affected them. Someone pointed out that these boys in earlier times
would have been expected to be and praised for becoming soldiers – with
the same attitudes and behaviours. I thought of the court case still
underway at this very time, where a soldier claims to have been defamed
when accused of such behaviour.
But I also thought, as the women
in the play tried to overcome their impossible situation (left to bring
up Nola’s and Stevie’s newborn boy), and as the women spoke in the
discussion, that social change has begun since the real case happened in
the 1980s and the play was written, made into a film, and has been
performed (at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney 2012, www.griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/the-boys ) and used as a school text for study.
The
feeling of horror around the world at what has been happening in
Ukraine is, I hope, a change; an unwillingness to accept the violence of
such warfare as any kind of normal.
And for these thoughts I
thank Amy (Dunham) Kowalczuk, her outstanding cast, and all the many
people she thanks in her program, for setting up Alchemy Artistic and
taking on the risk of performing The Boys first up. If
this is the standard of the company’s upcoming productions we can look
forward, in our community and I hope further afield, for more drama
which has revived my trust in humanity. This Easter has been as it
should be – the commemoration of an innocent’s death; and a hope for the
future of humankind.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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