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| The cast of The Bleeding Tree Photo by Elesa Kurtz |
A steep patterned uneven floor descends and ascends into the
black void. No one is prepared for the deafening crack of a rifle shot that
echoes through the farmhouse. A mother and her two daughters appear from the darkness;
husband and father lying dead at their feet. A bullet through the neck.
Our three narrators loom above us, angry and defiant,
shouting at the corpse of the man who abused them. They are glad to be free of
him. But this story doesn’t feel triumphant; it’s steeped in fear and dread and
a town closing in around them.
Mother and daughters must work together to get rid of the
body and protect each other when other townsfolk show up, worried about the
kind of man we so often hear described in the media as a “good bloke”. This small
town feels complicit in the cycle of abuse that this gunshot has fixed for now.
Angus Cerini’s The
Bleeding Tree is darkly poetic in its language, crafting a fable of sorts. Its
reaction and reflection on domestic abuse is visceral without feeling exploitative.
The violence is off-stage and alluded to. This story is about how these women
cope in the aftermath and we are witnesses to their stories and experiences; we
are listening when, in reality, so many victims of domestic violence aren’t
listened to.
The show, first produced at Griffin Theatre in Sydney, is intense
from gunshot to fade out and I can only imagine how that would have been
magnified in its original, intimate space.
Lee Lewis’ direction is sharp and clear and simple. The sloping
stage (design by Renee Mulder) is effective in keeping the characters and the
audience teetering on the edge; almost but not quite off-balance. The lighting
design by Verity Hampton is precise; the characters are held in an oppressive cocoon
of blackness and we are left to imagine the world pressing in around them.
Cerini’s text is lyrical and compelling and refuses to hold
your hand; neither for the audience’s benefit or the actors themselves. The
cast, led by Paula Arundell, is extraordinary. Arundell’s performance is a mix
of coarse defiance as mother and masculine bravado as the men who come to the
farm, looking for her husband – last seen stumbling out of the local pub.
Sophie Ross and Brenna Harding (new to this remount of the
production) are incredibly good as the daughters, swinging wildly between being
glad their father is dead, and worried for their wondering how they are going
to get rid of the body.
There are moments of grotesque humour scattered throughout
this lean, piercing seventy-five-minute play, allowing some relief to an
audience that might have been looking for a way out of the story they were
watching. I laughed less than most, overwhelmed by these women’s pain,
emotionally gutted by their circumstance and enraptured by a show that edged
close to perfection.
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