Left – Ashleigh Cummings and Benjamin Creek. Cover – Belinda Jombwe. Photos – Lisa TomasettiJulia-Rose Lewis draws on the stultifying uneasiness of an Australian country town to set the tone of her first play, Samson. Her regional Queensland town resonates with a sense of abandonment. It is a small, oppressive, parochial wasteland in which everybody knows your business but no one is looking after you.
The play is about three teenage friends coping with the loss of their good friend, Samson. We don’t meet this character, but we learn that he has lost his life in a random tragedy, accidentally breaking his neck doing a flip into the creek. There is a sense of low level, nagging mystery around the death that is never made explicit. While Samson’s girlfriend Beth (Belinda Jombwe) is heartbroken, the other two friends, Essie (Ashleigh Cummings) and Sid (Charles Wu), for their own reasons, feel culpable. They feel guilt that they goaded him into it or forced him to keep unbearable secrets. The cast of four is young, fresh and very accomplished.
In this small country town everyone attends the same church. What is it about that church and why is it that everyone goes there? Everybody notices when Essie stops attending. Is it a minor cult in the Queensland hinterland? It is not made explicit in any way. It merely operates as a niggling doubt, an interesting possibility that bubbles along beneath the action of the play.
Structurally, the narrative thread is quite thin, but effective. It is made up of small scenes – glimpses, really – delineating the aftershocks that emerge as a result of the death of the teenagers’ friend.
This is a world in which these kids live without the broader framework of family support. The fathers have mostly abandoned their families or are in jail. The kids have resigned themselves to dealing with life without guidance. And now, they have to figure out how to respond to what is probably the biggest crisis in their lives so far without any emotional anchor or wisdom from their families.For Essie, Samson’s death cements her resentment towards the church and the town and fires her determination to get out, although the mechanics of how she might do that, where she might go or what she might do are all unknown. Cummings delivers a character that is a wonderful mix of feisty teenage disaffection and loveable childish innocence.
Rabbit, played by the agile and charming Benjamin Creek, arrives in town and, with his stronger sense of self and more positive sensibility, befriends Essie. This is where Lewis is very good at highlighting the self-absorption and tribal nature of adolescence. Rabbit is coping with a similar grief, but even so, Beth and Sid don’t make any concessions for him. Obsessed with dealing with their own emotions, they have no space for empathy and demand they be left alone as their loss is so much more important than Rabbit’s.
Throughout the play, Samson hints at a more complex narrative and themes. It has the potential to be developed into a bigger, more substantial work that could more fully explore the characters and stories that Lewis alludes to. The current one act production follows a satisfying narrative arc however, and if nothing else, is worth seeing just to enjoy the spirited performances the material inspires in its young cast of performers.
A Belvoir and La Boite Theatre Company co-production
Samson
by Julia-Rose Lewis
Director Kristine Landon-Smith
Venue: Downstairs Theatre | Belvoir St Surry Hills NSW
Dates: 7 May – 31 May 2015
Tickets: $48 – $25
Bookings: www.belvoir.com.au
