The Fate Of Franklin
Four Larks
Secret Location in Northcote
8.30pm, 13th March 2010
This show is what Melbourne is all about – a boutique experience down a back alley with 22 performers. But, how do they pay for it? why do they do it? there is no doubt that this work is all about the project – the ideas and love of the company.
Stylistically the performance mode was willing to wear its heart on its sleeve. actors in white face makeup and period navy costumes is a bold choice considering the history of that type of design from the theatrical past. But somehow the company and the direction managed to not only do justice to the cliche of it and also undercut it as well.
The device of using Charles Dickens as someone who sat outside the production (and was in a way directing the action) allowed us to see the way that these distant exploration adventures were played out in the ‘press’ or the gossip of the British community. He talked a lot of ‘more emotion’ and that they should really be doing justice to the Britishness of the situation. It was interesting to find that this deconstructive choice did not destroy the story of the sailors, as one would imagine, in fact it enhanced it – they then became raised to mythical status. Indeed no-one ever knows how these things actually end up (what were the last few hours of Burke and Wills’ life like?), so it is pure speculation, indeed it is just a story.
I wondered why this story and why now? Franklin has his own connection to this part of the world, coming from Tasmania his name is all over the state – the Franklin river, the Franklin gorge , the Franklin dam, the Franklin electorate, Franklin (town) and Franklin Square in the centre of Hobart. But the era of discovery is long long over, we barely have the energy to get off our fat asses and pick up the tv remote, let alone go to Mars which should logically be the next step. In fact the polar icecaps are melting so much that the North West passage, (the explorers holy grail) is now becoming a North West six lane highway.
But sitting in that small room hearing this story from the past – maybe it is enough that someone has opened this chapter in history, opened this small window to the past for a special few who were witness to it tonight and for the rest of the season.
The ensemble work was great, the design was fitting and supportive and the music seamlessly connected to the rest of the production.
At times the boldness of the decisions made by the directors meant that there was a jerkiness between one scene and the next, and some of the performances did not match some of the more perfectly pitched actors. And I was not entirely sure of using Dickens in the final scene – it felt a little contrived and only caused confusion in me when i wanted to sit with the last man sitting in the snow waiting to die.
But these are small quibbles in a production that managed in a room with the barest of staging, capture the grandeur of the north west passage and the spirit and time of great adventure and discovery in the time of Empire and Queen Victoria.
