The impacts
of war on soldiers and family are central themes in storytelling throughout the
world, stretching back millennia. In a year when one of the top grossing films
is Christopher Nolan’s adaptation Homer’s The Odyssey and we continue to
witness Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, a play about the
Sri Lankan civil war, inspired by real-life events and Sophocle’s Antigone
speaks directly to the present moment.
On a mostly
bare stage, surrounded by walls pockmarked by bullet holes, the matriarch of a
large family walks in, blindfolded as if marching toward her execution. She moves
with subtlety and grace, her arms floating as if ready to dance. She is stopped
by a lone figure. Halted by the words “they have found the bodies”. It’s 2026.
The war ended 17 years ago and the family is on the brink of getting closure.
The play
jumps back in time to 1995. The civil war has been raging for twelve years by
then, though violence and persecution of the Tamilar people had erupted
numerous times over the proceeding three decades. The family we will follow
through decades is walking toward the beach, though Gowrie, the matriarch,
thinks the children should be studying. One of the kids has brought a cricket
bat. The others are ready to go swimming.
But this day,
filled with laughter and joy, is quickly upended – first by the dropping of
pamphlets and second by the bombing of a local church. Grandad Siva is blinded
in the attack and the family scatters, desperate to start new lives and escape
the ongoing attacks being visited upon the north of the country. Siva and granddaughter
Lakshmi escape their island nation and fly to Australia and the rest of the
first act is their lives in the so-called lucky country.
The Jungle
and the Sea was
first staged at Belvoir Theatre in Sydney in 2023, a follow-up to the award-winning
and widely-toured show, Counting and Cracking, which was also written by
S. Shakthidharan and directed by Eamon Flack. The earlier play was based on
Shakthi’s own family history; this follow-up is still family focused but by
digging into classic texts like Antigone and the Mahābhārata, The
Jungle and the Sea plays with mythic archetypes and reaches toward the epic.
Dale
Ferguson’s set is sparse, but it’s a wide-screen canvas against which this classic tale can unfold. Central to the experience is the large revolve in the centre,
where the cast spend a lot of time spinning around in front of us: walking
towards the beach or trudging through jungle. The use of small toy planes,
trucks and buses suggest the long distances they travel throughout the story
too, but that endlessly spinning revolve also suggests the whirlwind of these
characters’ lives. It slows only occasionally and I’m hard pressed to remember
if it ever stops until the end.
The show is
scored by composer Arjunan Puveendran and the use of Carnatic music puts us
squarely in the country where the play is set, but its percussion occasionally
jumps out as bombs rain down or guns fire. It’s a rich, complex score that livens
every moment on stage, expanding and enriching moments of delicacy and passages
of pure terror.
Shakthi and
Flack have crafted another decades-spanning tale that takes us to an hilarious coming out
story at the Sydney Opera House in one act to an impromptu wedding in the
jungle in act two. But the play does not shy away from the sharpness and cruelty
of violence and war and the sequences where one character describes for her
blindfolded grandmother, thousands of people being herded into a small strip of
land, trapped between a dense jungle and the roiling ocean is visceral and
heartrending.
Anandavalli’s
Gowrie is the emotional heart of the play, but Emma Harvie’s Laskshmi embodies
the joy of a character who has built a new life in Australia, even as she knows
she might get dragged back to her homeland at any moment. Prakash Belawadi
plays the grandfather with great gravitas (and humour) but also deftly brings
to life a Christian priest who accompanies some of the family on their dangerous
journey. Dushan Philips’ Kishan is trapped between loyalty to friends and
family and rules and regulations during the conflict. It’s a beautifully crafted
performance full of anger and anguish.
The
Jungle and the Sea
is boldly political in a time where it’s difficult to know what to say about
the state of the world. It clearly draws parallels to current conflicts, while
being open about the complicated history of Sri Lanka over the last seventy
years. It’s both informative and deeply moving. Joy is found in the darkness of
this family’s life, even though there’s very little light. And when the lights
do go out we are left to contemplate the devastation of war and the ongoing
trauma of a family, a society and a country.
This is a
remarkable piece of storytelling: urgent, essential theatre made by masters of their
crafts. One of the best shows I’ve seen on stage in years. Do not miss it.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
The Jungle
and the Sea is
playing at MTC’s Southbank Theatre until September 12
Photos: Pia Johnson
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