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Red Sky Morning
by Tom Holloway
Review by Karen Wighton, October 2011
Weather lore determines, in one of its most well known adages, that a red sky in the morning spells doom, and so throughout this play, no matter how innocuous the small talk, there is a sense that foul will befall.
Hailed as ‘play of the year’ by The Sunday Age, Red Sky Morning is another success by a rising star of the Australian theatre, Tom Holloway, who shares the experience of theatre in this very intimate play. "Three family members, three monologues, one day, and a heartbreaking tragedy of miscommunication."
Set in one 24 hour period, within the Australian human landscape of a family where three characters share their inner monologues as direct address to the audience, the play examines depression and isolation in rural Australia. It challenges the idea of the contemporary Australian man on the land, his overwhelming feelings unable to be voiced adequately. "I have a chat. It’s great to get to say g’day, you know? It's bloody great, so I have a chat and then - Don’t. And...No. What is this thing?" Its staging employs a simple form of ‘three actors on stools’. All are written sympathetically, without sentimentality. Pinteresque pauses break up the straightforward, colloquial words which tell the routine details of the characters’ existence and community.
Holloway uses silences well, signifying the character’s choice or inability to speak. These are indicated clearly in the script (as one or both of the other monologues continues) though never by the use of the word ‘pause’. Each of the monologues was first created as a stand-alone piece for that character, and in its development phase with Red Stitch Actors Theatre, the writer and creative team used music terminology – arias, trios, cacophony and silence, in putting it together.
Sam Strong, who was Dramaturg and Director of the play’s original development and production, refers in the script’s introduction, to Holloway’s innovative form of split focus between multiple voices as reflecting the way we receive information in the modern world, speedy and dense. He goes on to point out that its form perfectly matches its content, mirroring the confusion and anxiety of depression. Each character echoes the others' disillusioned experience to varying degrees, and though their language overlaps, the tight focus on their own concerns is as brilliant as the staging – within arm's reach, yet unable to communicate.
Tom Holloway employs out of the ordinary scriptwriting conventions: the format of the script on the page appears as three slim columns of speech, M (man), W (woman) and G (girl). The monologues are written as naturalistic streams of consciousness running simultaneously and reveal the characters are as much bonded as, conversely, they are disconnected. The usual stage directions are used, written in italics, or no punctuation signifying a ‘cut-off’ by another character. In addition, where monologues overlap, lines spoken simultaneously are written in bold. These conventions, especially the use of such active silence, allow the words and rhythm of the work to create a genuinely compelling experience in performance. Timing is everything, and it works beautifully. M’s sole voice breaks momentarily into a gap in the disharmony of voices of each immersed in their own experience, ‘I reach for a gun’; the build continues, unrelenting.
Being a confronting new Australian work, a mixed audience reaction might be expected: as we sat captivated by the early amusing depiction of a real family, a woman in the audience behind us disapproved of the unrefined, domestic dialogue, with a repeated ‘tsk tsk tsk’, then further expressed her irritation by walking out midway. Sadly, she therefore missed the poignancy of the breathtaking moment where the characters’ cheery language (give me a home among the gum trees) falters and the pretence crumbles.
By play’s end, this family have barely made it through the red sky morning day. As to whether they will set out the following day more certain of fairer conditions is ambiguous. The audience is left with only a glimmer of hope, as unpredictable as tomorrow’s weather.
Red Sky Morning is the Winner of the 2009 Green Room Award for Best New Australian Writing and the 2007 R. E. Ross Trust Development Award.