Audience members enter Perth’s Blue Room Theatre armed with only a cryptic description and a reference to the work of Werner Herzog to guide expectations, so if you wish to attend and experience the boat goes over the mountain in the intended spirit, please wait until after the show to read any further.
Cries of exotic birds and a tropical mist greet audience members as they file into the dim theatre – this is the Blue Room, just not as we’ve ever seen it before. Planks of wood jut up from the floor, looking like an incomplete fencing project emerging through the centre of the stage. A man with remarkable facial hair – wiry mutton chops pointing in all directions at once – brushes his high standing kit cymbals to one side of the room. We barely notice the door close; then another man is singing to us. Standing among the tuned timbers, with his drummer-friend playing the satisfyingly thunking notes with drum sticks, Andrew sings to us as a way of leading us into his story of an adventure of a middle-aged man who decides to try something new to break out, away from his general dissatisfaction with life.
Following the journey from Perth to Peru, to participate in the shamanic rituals around ayahuasca, Andrew Hale recounted his personal experience of seeking after truth and his inner self. The tone of the story telling was wry, conscious perhaps of the decades that have passed since young adventurers hit the hippy trails around the world, and of the awareness that an educated family man should have more ‘common sense’ than to embark on such a quest.
The manner of telling was mesmerising, a clear, gentle voice that broke into song, chant, and snatches of dialogue with other characters and visions in dreams (as voiced by composer Dave Richardson, in the course of his movements around the set), with sharply positioned lighting creating a sense of space: the idea of a boat, with which the players shared the stage. The accompanying music, whether played live or recorded, further added to the soundscape, the creation of a world and movement through a process and a landscape, in the manner of a dream, albeit one replete with recurring retching issues.
A one-man monologue that moved around the stage as it moved through various states of reality and consciousness, this latest offering from Happy Dagger Theatre was disarmingly honest and did not shy away from cliché in its pursuit of truth.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
the boat goes over the mountain
Presented by The Blue Room Theatre and Happy Dagger Theatre
Writer/Director: Andrew Hale
Set and Costume Design: India Mehta
Composer/Musician: Dave Richardson
Stage Manager: Emma Caitlin Brown
Lighting Design: Emily Telfer
Executive Producer: Renee Hale
Performed by Andrew Hale and Dave Richardson
The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge
10 – 28 September
