Gorgeous achievement in courageous storytelling

Theatre-Dance/ “That Was Friday”, directed by Charley Sanders and choreographed by Eliza Sanders. At Belconnen Arts Centre till November 26. Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

THIS extraordinary large-scale, multi-disciplinary work grapples with questions of identification, household, nationality and belonging. 

Charley Sanders and Eliza Sanders have drawn collectively a forged of completed dancers, actors, videographers and designers to provide a piece that’s, at occasions, puzzling, participating, confronting, intriguing, transferring, however finally satisfying and thought-provoking.

It’s tough to write down with out the danger of spoiling it for these audiences but to expertise the efficiency. Suffice to say, by interval, I discovered myself puzzling as to what I used to be supposed to consider what I had been watching, however intrigued as to the place it was taking me. 

Then, by the disarmingly easy conclusion, when all of the threads had been neatly drawn collectively, charmed, glad and eager to muse on the problems the manufacturing highlighted so successfully.

Intriguingly labelled as each autobiographical and fictional, “That was Friday” tells a comparatively easy story about household. It’s a few mom’s efforts to maintain her household collectively in a world the place journey has by no means been simpler, and communication even simpler. It’s a few son eager to discover what that world has to supply, and a daughter equally set on reaching her full potential, all in several elements of the world. However it’s how it’s informed that makes this manufacturing so exceptional

By means of hanging video captures the viewers is aware about the video-link conversations between the mom (Sara Zwangobani) and her efforts to maintain the strains of communication open together with her son, Jack (Lachlan Martin) and daughter Eliza (Enya Daly) as they observe their desires in several elements of the world.

Punctuating these conversations, dancers Billy Keohavong, Jareen Wee, Ella Williams and Ryan Douglas Stone present an summary illustration of the swirling feelings and occasions surrounding these conversations; their each transfer captured on video by a fifth dancer, Alec Katsourakis.

The video design by Laura Turner and Mario Spate is kind of exceptional in the way in which it creates intimacy between viewers and actor, in addition to offering further spectacle, enhanced as it’s by Tony Black’s considerate lighting design and the understated costume design by Monique Bartosh.

For these prepared to increase their perceptions of story-telling, “That Was Friday” is a “must-see”. For Home of Sand and Belco Arts it’s a gorgeous achievement in courageous and compelling storytelling, which deserves to be seen by a a lot bigger viewers than can have the chance throughout this temporary season. 

Nonetheless, it additionally must be stated that regardless of its brilliance, at two and a half hours on opening evening, it wants tightening and trimming.