The cast of The Campaign. Photo credit: Richard Parkinson.
A timely, passionate and insightful piece of theatre with a tight ensemble cast, The Campaign is brought together via a unique collaboration between Tasmanian theatre companies Blue Cow and Tasmanian Theatre Company, in collaboration with mainland company If Theatre.
Through interviews and recorded transcripts of the time, the play delves deeply into the 1980s-1990s campaign for gay law reform in Tasmania. Many may not know that until 1997 homosexuality was a criminal offence in Tasmania, with a possible sentence of 21 years imprisonment – higher than the punishment for rape or armed robbery. The verbatim theatre form of the work is a perfect and deeply impactful way to share such a pivotal decade in the history of human rights in Tasmania.
Throughout the campaign for equal rights many of the key community leaders and fearless campaigners who fought for law reform were arrested, harassed and vilified. They stood courageously in their convictions, simultaneously fighting the discrimination in the courts and putting themselves in front of the broader community again and again in efforts to garner the support of public opinion.
The story of how they eventually achieved this change is at the centre of The Campaign.
Verbatim theatre has its challenges. It can be difficult to pull off successfully because it requires the actors to essentially strip back their acting and trust the text. Matt Scholten does a great job in directing the ensemble and successfully pulls the actors back from the brink of over characterisation.
Read: How verbatim theatre can keep history alive
A particular standout is Robert Jarman – playing Bob Brown, Justice Michael Kirby, and of course, Robert Jarman playing Robert Jarman. For Robert this piece is a lived experience, which makes his presence on stage all the more powerful.
Melissa King was outstanding as a protesting, passionate and wily mother; Alex Duncan was simultaneously weary and determined as Nick Toonen; Benjamin Winckle as a vulnerable and brave Todd is endearing and sensitive, and of course utterly believable as the fearless Rodney Croome. The restraint shown by all them to present believable and grounded characters is engaging and fantastic.
Playwright, Campion Decent doesn’t stick solely to the pared-back honesty of verbatim theatre however. At times we see musicality and choreography used to heighten the absurdity of the situation and here the actors can find the joy in the piece and share their laughter with the audience. One gets the sense through this work that humour helped get the campaigners through some of the hardest times of this decade long campaign. This was wonderfully explored as the key members of the campaign find more and more creative ways to get their message across to the Tasmanian community.
If it were to tour, and I sincerely hope that it has the opportunity to, The Campaign could benefit from some additional resourcing for its design elements, which would lift the design to a more nuanced and layered place.
This is a brilliant piece of intimate and simultaneously joyful and gut wrenching theatre. The kind of theatre whose power is intensified by knowing that everything that is spoken comes from historical record and from those who lived through this time.
At the end of the play the audience rose in unison for a well deserved standing ovation and you could see the tears streaming down faces, and smiles breaking through them as we applauded the cast, director, writer – and importantly those in the audience who were the inspiration for the work.
4 ½ stars: ★★★★☆
The Campaign
Tasmanian Theatre Company, Blue Cow Theatre and If Theatre
Writer: Campion Decent
Director: Matt Scholten
Set and Costume Designer: Matt Scholten
Lighting Designer: Nick Higgins
Choreography: Cassie Xintavelonis, Robert Jarman
Cast: Robert Jarman, Melissa King, Ben Winckle, Alex Duncan, and Rosemary Cann
22 October – 3 November 2018
Peacock Theatre, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart
