Is the Past Another Country?

“It’s all in you now, brother”, declares the spirit of Bennelong to Sebastian, a contemporary actor who’s conjured him while preparing to audition to impersonate the historical man in a play called, of course, Bennelong in London – which is our play as well. A little bit of meta-theatre to add to the pleasures of this two-hander by Jane Harrison, the Murawari woman who’s already had hits with Stolen and The Visitors.

The first was a contemporaneous critique of the stolen generations of her First People. The second a much more speculative debate among 1788 Eora people as to how to handle the Australia Day invaders as their ships approached Tubowgale, the peninsular that would become Bennelong Point.

Now we have past and present at the same time thanks to the magic of theatre. Guy Simon’s Sebastian is a pretty callow and politically correct Koori despite his “initiation” at NIDA (as Simon himself was). He needs to learn a whole lot about his Wangal predecessor before the character could be anywhere near “in him”, as he’s proved by the cliched actorly way he’s gone about preparing for the role. But the process of bringing him down and then up again is delightfully achieved in a play that’s quite prepared to admit the mighty gulf between 1788’s Aborigines like the full-blood Bennelong and his mixed-race successors in Sydney.

Both actors, of course, look pretty much alike. But Googoorewon Knox’s feisty Bennelong differs from Sebastian in more than bare skin and a bit of body paint. His voice modulation – all in English apart from some thrilling chants – somehow carries an outback (maybe Armidale, where Knox comes from?) tone that distinguishes him from city-boy Sebastian. It’s the only way he can get away with doubting the actor, “Are you even a Black man?”. And then there are little things like beating his wives and preferring justice in the form of payback that really shock Sebastian. (BTW guys, Bennelong’s triple-headed fishing spear may test OH&S limits on today’s stages, but it’s certainly not a payback spear with its single point as suggested).

Much of Bennelong’s life and attitudes emerge before his famous 3 year visit to London. Why did he choose to go? Well his relationship with Governor Phillip is key to that. From the seizing and imprisonment of Bennelong that might have lead him to totally reject all Whitefellars, via escape and the payback spearing of Phillip that Bennelong made sure another man performed, they’re explained by Harrison’s claim that it was a deliberate project to gain a greater understanding of these alien people once it was clear that they were intending to stay. Phillip had been a spy during his military career in Europe; Bennelong was simply matching him.

And the London visit was part of the plan. Where better to find out what made the bastards tick than to head for the centre of their world, dress up like them (even if Bennelong never got to meet George III in his new finery), go to the theatre frequently, and correspond with the likes of Joseph Banks? That despite Banks’s unpleasant habit of collecting Aboriginal bones. Which may explain why, as Harrison points out, Bennelong threw it all off when he returned to Sydney, retiring to Kissing Point on Wangal Country with his fellow Eora, happy to become “a troublesome savage” again.

For Harrison has also made it quietly clear that Bennelong really wants his story told – and told right – because he believes he lived in a time of “harmony, nature, law and ceremony, when everything was known”. A beautiful summation of that pre-lapsarian era.

Guy Simon, who took out a Helpmann Award for his performance in Jasper Jones, makes the transformation from shallow to deep splendidly, even managing some convincing ceremonial dancing at the end. And Googoorewon Knox, fresh from playing George Washington in the musical Hamilton, can go from reacting hilariously to the news that he only has that peninsular named after him while Barangaroo, his wife, has a whole suburb, to hinting that it all might have been very different if the “colonial powers” hadn’t had muskets to protect themselves from the aggrieved Indigenes.

Despite being a proud Noongar man from Western Australia, Ian Michael, the STC’s resident director has captured Sydney past and present with the help of cultural advisor Matthew Doyle in ways that match Jane Harrison’s wit and perspicacity.

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