Review - Hipbone Sticking Out

Hipbone Sticking Out

Written with and for the Roebourne community & directed by Scott Rankin. Big hART production at Melbourne Festival. Arts Centre Melbourne, 

Playhouse. 17 – 21 October 2014 

Hipbone Sticking Out s a beautifully polished will funded/supported/backed work a stunning opportunity to see what Community Theatre can be – at its best. 

Having taken three years to develop by Big hArt with the community of Roebourne in the Pilbara Hipbone Sticking Out takes it inspiration from the death in custody of a 16 year old boy John Pat.  It is a sort of retrospective look at the damage done to Australia’s beautiful sensitive indigenous communities from the beginning of brutal imperialistic colonization.

Trevor Jamison and Nelson Coppin

Very movingly it focuses on the boy John Pat as an adult through the strong and thoroughly engaging stage presence of Trevor Jamison who is a continual presence with his sixteen year old younger self played by Nelson Coppin.

Trevor Jamison

Boasting some wonderfully strong performers and a whole troupe of glorious singers the work just bursts to life with a splendid audio of exquisite voices.

Lex Marinos is a beautiful strong presence and his voice is rich and mellifluous.  He plays a wonderful Pluto as things get rolling and narrates throughout.

Although it does have a very persuasive didactic core there is much humour throughout and a sense of irony often comes to the fore.  

How Australia’s Indigenous Mobs were forced into the untenable position that was and is now unrelentingly debilitating is clearly described.  It is a timely work a clear and through overview, a background that we can move forward from.

Having recently read Kate Grenville’s moving Novel The Secret River noted some similarities and that text is fairly soon to hit our small screens.

The concluding positive and proactive emphasis is on the young people and how to support them and help facilitate burgeoning futures. 

  

The set designed by Genevieve Dugard is versatile and interesting.  The stage that is raked to one side and offers considerable flexibility.  The use of projections is simply stunning. 

In interval I found myself thinking of all the people I would love to be able to take to this show – hopefully there will be other chances.

Really tremendous Theatre - so worth catching.

Suzanne Sandow

(For Stage Whispers)