By Cameron Woodhead
THEATRE
THE WAY OUT ★★½
Red Stitch, until September 24
Josephine Collins' debut The Way Out plunges us into a dystopian Australia, where a food crisis has led to a bloody civil war. The aftermath saw swaths of the country polluted by bio-weapons, and the survivors have fallen into the iron clutches of an authoritarian, one-party state.
A bloody civil war has left survivors in the clutches of a one-party state.Credit: Teresa Noble
Eking out an existence in this grim future are Stewart (Dion Mills) and his daughter Helen (Brigid Gallacher), owners of an outback pub. Together with a shady black marketeer (Sahil Saluja), a distiller of moonshine (Olga Makeeva), and a local policeman (Kevin Hofbauer), they make ends meet by smuggling valuables and bootlegging liquor in the "off-book" economy.
The penalty for such crimes is public execution, and when a government inspector (Rory Kelly) arrives at an inconvenient moment, a desperate web of violence and betrayal is revealed.
This darkly atmospheric production leaves you wanting to know more about its imagined world and the characters who inhabit it. It's a tricky balancing act to evoke dystopian futures through live theatre. Such plays lack the length and descriptive ability of written fiction, and the panoramic potential of cinema, and the few that succeed tend to focus more deeply on character, with world-building emerging through compressed dialogue and suggestion.
Collins isn't experienced enough to avoid forced-looking moves that are mere pretexts to further the plot – random exits and entrances abound – and there's exposition that seems to compromise rather than reveal character. Yet she can keep you intrigued, and I wonder if this play mightn't have been over-pruned: it feels shorter than it needs to be.
Still, an impressive cast under director Penny Harpham have fine moments. Gallacher brings the quirky heroine to life with an understated blend of offbeat humour and quiet resolve. The production excels at intimate exchanges, and Gallacher is often at her best opposite Hofbauer's goofy man-boy, Makeeva's doomed family friend, and Mills' maimed, war veteran father.
Kelly's near-parody of officialdom achieves some unsettlingly likeable authoritarian clowning, even if the forces of darkness he represents don't quite ring true. And Saluja keeps you guessing as a dubious figure caught between worlds, although not even he can save a climactic lyrical monologue that doesn't work dramatically.
The Way Out is sometimes stilted and occasionally implausible, but never boring. It's a talented first play that left me eager to see how Collins develops her craft.