While diverse casting in the new production attempts to mitigate this literary settler trope, it would require a deeper intervention in the writing itself to fully succeed. The Indigenous characters in the play remain spectral and/or peripheral – artificially grafted to the lives of the Lambs and Pickles as counterpoint. This narrative device is advanced in both the novel and its theatrical adaptation. However, relegating Indigenous presence to the margins of plot or to the ghostly realm is a major sticking point in Cloudstreet and has been critiqued before. The play’s stunning final image is elemental and cathartic, promising to wash away the colonial hauntings of the past, which leaves us to contemplate our own position in an Australian landscape beset by a continuing history of settler colonial violence. The Swan River plays a key role in the story.
The walls of the house are not static – they grind as they protrude and retract, giving the impression the audience is moving in and out of a secret crypt.īenjamin Oakes, Guy Simon and Ian Michael in Cloudstreet. The set-design (Zoë Atkinson), is reminiscent of a modernist style, with the set doubling as both the outdoors and the inside of the house. Matthew Lutton’s directorial hand is palpable, delivering haunting atmospherics sustained and supported by a rich, often unsettling soundscape (J. Overtones of cheery nostalgia intersect with moments of magical-horror or surrealism – these arrive in the form of theatre’s equivalent to the horror genre’s jump scare. Yet the play is unapologetically nostalgic and tips its hat to vaudeville, with larger than life delivery of dialogue, course humour, and a strong embrace of working-class Australian vernacular. The outline of two figures whom we assume are the souls of the departed are literally etched in black charcoal onto the back wall. The house and its surrounds are haunted by the past: the walls and foundation are soaked with the traumatised presences of its previous occupants. One of the mission’s girls returns as an embodied presence on the stage, at times interrupting the dramatic time of the play to offer its main characters pieces of wisdom or provide exposition on plot. The young Indigenous captives perished in the house along with its cruel mistress. Guy Simon and Ian Michael in Cloudstreet.
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