To British ears, it sounds implausible
and even a little absurd: a play based on the true story of an
Aboriginal Australian soul group’s 1969 tour of Vietnam. However, our
lack of combat involvement in that war detaches us from it as an
episode of history, whereas Australia provided the third largest
foreign troop contingent after the U.S. and South Korea. This was also
a watershed period in Aboriginal history: it was only two years earlier
that they had been granted full civil rights within Australia. Black
American troops in Vietnam were helping to modernise the racial
perceptions in their homeland, but the position of black Australians
was perhaps more sensitive still. There is, then, much of resonance in
Tony Briggs’ play, not least for him: the real-life Sapphires were his
mother, her sister and two of their cousins.
But
the resonance is specifically Australian. Move Belvoir & Black Swan
State Theatre Company’s production halfway round the world and, bereft
of social and historical underpinning, all we see is a story with a
number of simplistic elements. The youngest of the quartet, Julie,
reveals that she is pregnant; Cynthia is confronted by her ex Jimmy,
who abandoned her some way before the altar and is now serving in
Vietnam; Kay gets involved with an American pilot; hardest-edged
Sapphire Gail gradually falls for their incompetent but good-hearted
white manager Dave; they befriend a teenage Vietnamese hustler in
search of the rural family he has been supporting from his city
activities. Gunfire, logistical nightmares and the “two days away from
retirement” cliché are all present and correct… as well, of course, as
the music.
That side of matters is
solid, in the best sense. As Cynthia, Casey Donovan makes full use of
both her near-Aretha voice and her beyond-Aretha upholstery; Megan
Sarmardin and Ngaire Pigram as Julie and Kay are sweeter but scarcely
less powerful. Peter Farnan’s (all-white) backing band features some
sterling electric piano work from Simon Burke on numbers such as “I
Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” and the Gladys Knight-style
arrangement of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”. Nevertheless,
despite Cynthia’s frequent exhortations to “shake your moom”, the lack
of dramatic or background-historical engagement left my moom in its
seat, unshaken.
Written for the Financial
Times.