The show opens in 1995, when Sri Lanka is in the middle of a civil war that would last another 14 years. The conflict had already been raging for 12 years and would continue for 26 years, ending on May 18, 2009, with a military victory by the government over the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. A victory that cost the lives of an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people. Shakthidharan and Flack then return to these characters in 2009 as the fighting comes to an end, before bringing us into the present. It’s a story that takes nearly three hours to tell, but we become so invested into their lives that it feels like almost no time has passed.
The cast is exceptional. Anandavalli, an internationally renowned Sri Lankan-born dancer and Shakthidharan’s mother, has a commanding presence as Gowrie, a woman who is deeply respected and whose voice demands to be heard. She remains a strong, stable figure throughout, despite the harshness she faces. At one point, she places a blindfold over her eyes and refuses to remove it until her children are reunited. It is a striking physical expression of her determination and devotion, particularly when contrasted with Siva’s very different experience of blindness. Prakash Belawadi plays her husband with a gentler, more jovial energy, but brings out a sensitive and wounded side of Siva after he loses his sight in a bomb blast.
It is fascinating watching the four actors playing the children - Emma Harvie, Nadie Kammallaweera, Shiv Palekar and Kalieaswari Srinivasan - as each is shaped differently by the conflict. Ahilan (Palekar) is swept up by the Tamil Tigers, forcing his family to search desperately for him, while Abi (Srinivasan) is fiery and determined, refusing to let the fighting stand in the way of what she believes is right. Madhu (Kammallaweera) has a fierce bond to her mother, while the youngest, Lakshmi (Harvie), escapes much of the physical brutality of the conflict only to carry its trauma with her to Australia. Each child takes a different path through the turmoil, showing how the same circumstances can leave their own distinct scars. All four also bring elements of Anandavalli and Belawadi’s Gowrie and Siva to their performances, making the familial ties between the generations even more authentic.
The script explores the contradictions of war while also making room for religious and philosophical questions. It provides historical context for audiences who may not be familiar with Sri Lanka's Civil War, but does so without feeling like a history lesson. Although the family at the centre of the play is fictional, these events are grounded in the reality of the conflict and reflect experiences faced by countless people during the fighting. Historical detail is woven naturally into the drama, allowing us to understand the wider situation through its impact on ordinary people.
More importantly, the characters are never reduced to victims of circumstance. Even as their lives are torn apart by violence, separation and loss, they retain their humour, stubbornness, love and dignity. We feel the weight of the words they share with us, and when characters die, we feel those losses in our gut. On opening night, there were audible gasps at several points, testament to how effectively these deaths are staged and directed. But there is also room for lightheartedness and laughs, such as when Lakshmi comes out to her father as a lesbian atheist. The two find a lovely comedic rhythm and, for a moment, we forget about the pain and anxiety they are living through. These flashes of joy matter because they show that life continues even in the middle of war.
Musicians Arjunan Puveendran and Hari Sivanesan create the music and sound alongside Sound Designer Steve Francis, with Puveendran also composing the score, which becomes a performance in its own right. The production incorporates two ancient South Indian instruments, the veena, a plucked string instrument with a rich, resonant sound, and the mridangam, a double-headed drum that provides the rhythmic foundation. Together, they establish a strong sense of place and cultural identity, but their role extends beyond the music. The instruments are also used to produce the sound effects, so when gunshots ring out or bombs explode, their sudden, jarring sounds jolt us just as much as they do the characters. We are not watching the terror of war unfold, we are made to experience it with them.The set design by Dale Ferguson, consists of two walls that meet at a corner upstage, broadly painted with blue skies and darker colours suggesting paths, grass and jungle. It is simple but highly effective, providing a flexible environment that can shift with the action. A revolve is installed into the stage and becomes an important device to convey the passage of time. It is constantly moving, changing speed depending on what we are watching and how quickly we are moving through the years. A plane trip to Australia and a bus journey to track down their brother are particularly well executed, using the revolve to create movement without requiring elaborate staging. Its relentless movement suggests that the family cannot escape what is happening to them, travelling in circles as the years pass. Even the creaking of the mechanism beneath the actors adds to this precariousness, as though everything could come crashing down around them at any moment.
Props are used sparingly but effectively to establish time and place, transporting us from a restaurant in Sydney to a hospital filled with injured people in Sri Lanka, and eventually to a lagoon, with some surprising stage design that elicits a visceral response.
Lighting Designer Damien Cooper makes the most of light and darkness, using them to shape the emotional world of the play. Floor lights and overhead lights are used to shift the tone of the production, altering its warmth and starkness as the narrative progresses. At other times, when the family is enveloped in darkness, a single lantern is used to illuminate them, creating an intimate and striking visual.
What stays with me most about The Jungle and the Sea is how deeply it made me feel what these people are going through. The sadness, despair, anger, fear and helplessness is never distant or abstract, with the moments of joy and tenderness making the devastation hit harder when they come. For a production spanning 26 years, multiple countries and a devastating civil war, it successfully keeps its focus firmly on the people at its centre. We understand the conflict through their arguments, their love for each other, their mistakes and their desperate attempts to find their way back to one another. By the end, the scale of the story is remarkably personal, leaving us with a clear sense of what it means for a war to end on paper while its consequences continue to impact the lives of those who survived it.
SHOW DETAILS
Venue: Southbank Theatre, 140 Southbank Blvd, Southbank
Season: until 12 September | Mon - Tues 6:30pm, Wed - Sat 7:30pm, Sat 1:30pm
Duration:
170 minutes including two intervals
Tickets: $49 - $135
Bookings: Melbourne Theatre Company
Images credit: Pia Johnson
No comments:
Post a Comment