With two festivals in full swing, the Perth Cultural Centre precinct is buzzing with live music, film screenings, street bars, theatre, and of course, swarms of people enjoying their night out. Irish one-hander Eternal Rising of the Sun, then, came as something of a mood changer after the vibrant mood outside.
Performed in a sometimes dense colloquial accent, the life of Gina Divine, as told in this HotForTheatre production, is rather bleak, but nonetheless charts a transformation of sorts.
There’s no denying the brilliance of writer and performer Amy Conroy’s acting as she switches effortlessly from Gina’s violent partner, Jake, a hard-bitten lower class drunk, to Anton, the intense dance instructor, to Gina as a vulnerable seven year old. However, this heavy topic – the life of a teenage mother and high school dropout with a bad dad, dead ma and no prospects except for a few dance classes – didn’t really seem to engage the 110 punters present on this particular Fringe World night.
Nonetheless, it’s an impressive piece of work. The writing effectively plays with the notion of ordinary life and celebrity (ranging from the universal ‘I always thought I’d be famous’ through to the more character specific ‘fame makes everything (bad) go away’) and there is extraordinary magic in the way the production creates diverse worlds with hardly any props save for three plastic chairs, a drink bottle, a mobile phone and short, intermittent sections of film.
Conroy’s compelling acting and a few deft lighting changes convincingly evoke a dank work cafeteria, the dance floor of a nightclub, the small interior of a community hall, and Gina’s grey-tinged flat. Particularly memorable is the work’s unusual use of silence. ‘Have the courage to go slow,’ is the dance instructor’s mantra, and Conroy uses pauses and stage silence bravely throughout the piece.
Eternal Rising of the Sun won the Best Female Performer award at the 2011 Dublin Fringe Festival, and Conroy’s superb acting skills, plaintive singing and attempts at ‘emerging self through dance’ are well worth seeing; she is certainly an actor with a bright future. The writing is also incredibly effective, and very much succeeds at getting into the heads of her array of down-on-their-luck characters in a grim urban setting.
If only the Perth audience had been more into it. They laughed out loud at drug jokes and unexpected moments of swearing, and a few stood up to applaud Conroy at the end, but overall, it seemed the audience was more attuned to what was happening on the streets outside the theatre than in the realities of this grim but effective Irish drama.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights and HotForTheatre
In association with PICA present
Eternal Rising of the Sun
Written and Performed by Amy Conroy
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth Cultural Centre
12 – 16 February
Fringe World 2013
www.fringeworld.com.au
25 January – 24 February
