Doku Rai has many of the hallmarks of The Black Lung’s work: raw anarchic energy, frequent narrative derailment, meta-theatrical interjections, and physical violence. What the Timorese collaborators have brought to it – their folklore, their music, and an entirely different cultural perspective – has made it unlike anything The Black Lung has created before.
Running loosely through the narrative is the concept of the ‘doku’, a curse visited upon an individual: in this case, a curse brought down by one brother against another. Things are complicated by the fact that the cursed brother apparently cannot die, no matter how many times he is murdered by an increasingly desperate assassin. The brother laying the curse grows ever more crazed as his hitherto solid standing as a quasi-religious leader crumbles. This theme has a directness and simplicity that transcends the cultural differences between the work’s creators, and gives the play coherence. This is much harder said than done when you consider some of the issues that might have demanded commentary, such as the hard-won independence of an emerging nation, and the political tensions existing between Timor and its affluent neighbour, Australia.
Music and singing is integral to Doku Rai with a simplicity that makes the dialogue-based wordiness of much conventional theatre seem hopelessly contrived. The play begins and ends with galvanic live music performances by the whole cast, and is interspersed with solo guitar and drum performances. Humour is used incredibly deftly as another way in which cultural differences are highlighted: as when one of the Australian performers, Gareth Davies as ‘director’, continually interrupts the show to harangue the Timorese performers, he succeeds only in making himself look ridiculous and out of his depth.
While the set evokes the claustrophobic interior of the hotel in which the work might have been made, Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s video design succeeds in bringing the breathtaking beauty of Timorese beaches and jungles to the audience sitting in a Melbourne theatre. In showing scenes from the creative development, it succeeds also in sharing with us the journey of making the work.
As a piece of theatre, Doku Rai is powerfully ramshackle, starkly eloquent, touching and funny and brutal.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Doku Rai (you, dead man, I don’t believe you)
The Black Lung Theatre and Whaling Firm, Liurai Fo’er & Galaxy
Director/Designer: Thomas M Wright
Lighting Designer: Govin Ruben
Video Sequencer: Amiel Courtin-Wilson
Translator: Elizabeth Adams
Producer: Alex Ben-Mayor
Technical Management and System Design: The Rubix Cube
Production Manager: Emily O’Brien
Performers/Musicians: Liam Barton, Etson Caminha, Gareth Davies, Melchior Dias Fernades, Osme Gonsalves, Thomas Henning, Laca Ribeiro, Vaczadenjo Wharton-Thomas
Assistant Video Sequencer: Scott McCulloch
Arts House Meat Market, North Melbourne
August 29 – September 2
