The Cherry Pickers
Written by Kevin Gilbert
Sydney Theatre Company
Directed by Wesley Enoch
Playing at the Wharf 2 Theatre, Walsh Bay, Sydney
Until March 4
REVIEW BY BRENDAN DOYLE
We laughed, cried, felt uplifted, some felt offended — one blackfella cursed and walked out — but we all felt part of a strong, shared theatrical experience, that will stay in the heart.
Kevin Gilbert, Aboriginal activist, poet, artist and playwright, wrote The Cherry Pickers in 1968, just after the referendum that won Aborigines the vote and citizenship. If Gilbert were alive, I'm sure he would be pleased with this production by Wesley Enoch.
As you walk into the theatre, you smell gum leaves burning. The all-indigenous cast greet the audience, strumming guitars, telling jokes, fooling around and saying hello to the many blackfellas who have come to see the show. You feel you are here to share a good night out. We were not disappointed.
As the lights go down, three old women — Ettie, Subina and Bubba — sit around a camp fire, talking and waiting for the start of the cherry-picking season. It is the time of the year when the men can get paid work and forget for a time their poverty.
The women also wait for Johnollo, their strongest old man and hero. He alone gives them hope. He stands up to the white boss and tries to get higher wages for the workers. He knows the old ways and helps the people through hard times.
But this year, the women have a bad feeling. The cherry tree, symbolised by a gigantic root system that hovers over the stage, does not bear fruit. Johnollo has been delayed. Their world begins to unravel as they and their men question their ability to survive as a people and a culture.
Meanwhile, they drink plonk, share jokes, muck around and try to maintain a communal life in the midst of a life lived without honour and dignity, their land stolen and their culture desecrated.
And yet they manage to laugh. The women tell crude jokes and sling off at the men, who can't stand up because of the drink. It was in the middle of this that a black audience member, no doubt finding it all too painful, swore at the actors for portraying women in such a "bad" light and was led from the theatre.
Enoch stopped the show and went out to talk to the man. When he returned, he asked the rattled actors to go on. They did, to huge applause.
In the second half of the play, the darker side of it all comes to the fore. Tommlo, whose wife Zeena has lost two babies to malnutrition, covers himself in white ochre and pleads with Zeena to join him in a traditional dance to reaffirm that they have not lost all their culture. It's a scene of great pain and beauty.
In the program notes, Enoch quotes Gilbert who said that, "You sharpen your axe on the hardest stone". Enoch adds, "For me, it means we should use the hardships we face to strengthen us, to clarify our arguments, to be reminded why we do what we do, what makes us a people." Gilbert spent 14 years in prison but managed to becomes a strong voice for his people.
Richard Wherrett recently attacked subsidised theatre, including the STC, as having lost its way and being a con. The Cherry Pickers points theatre in the right direction. Ticket prices at $20 and $15 concession are a welcome relief.