Review: Hart
Adelaide Fringe
Hart begins with performer Ian Michael sitting, facing away from the audience as we listen to politicians speaking on Aboriginal issues; Paul Keating’s Redfern speech and Kevin Rudd’s Sorry speech continue to resonate with their clarity and significance. ★★★½
This is a verbatim-theatre work for which Ian Michael and co-writer Seanna van Helten have researched stories as told by four men to the Stolen Generations’ Testimonies Foundation. They interviewed two of them about their experiences and, with permission to adapt the stories, they have created a powerful show.
Michael is an entertaining and engaging performer with plenty of energy. He delivers his monologues with sincerity and integrity, vividly bringing the four men’s stories to life.
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The set at Tandanya Theatre is simple, consisting of a hand-drawn white circle on the floor, reflected in a projection upstage. A screen displays graphic black and white photos of Aboriginal slavery and oppression, films of children on missions and the Aboriginal flag.
Michael cleverly integrates his experiences as a Noongar man from Western Australia with the stories of the Stolen Generation, so we hear of a man who felt isolated from his family; a man who feels that nothing can compensate for the loss of a father, siblings and community, and a man who is rejected for not being dark enough for one society and too dark for another.
Our society tends to worship the individual, especially the successful, celebrity individual, whereas Michael makes clear that the traditional Aboriginal community emphasised the importance of community over an individual.
The stories are powerful, the storyteller is skillful and the breaking of the floor circle suggests the breaking of community. Although he breaks the circle, Michael simultaneously covers himself in white, creating a clear metaphor that he is a modern Noongar man with his roots in traditional Aboriginal society which is a connection that cannot be undone.
Three-and-a-half stars
She Said Theatre is presenting Hart at Tandanya Theatre until March 13.
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