The world that Australian playwright Sam Atwell portrays in his play BONDI DREAMING is a hostile, dark world where his characters survive on ‘make believe’.

Atwell’s scenario is a fictitious account of three young Australians, mates since childhood, Frankie, Charlie and Macca,who are on death row in an Asian prison on drug charges. BONDI DREAMING takes place in their last days as they prepare for their fate. To pass the time, and to escape the unthinkable reality of their existence, they ‘role-play’ to reminisce shared memories, and fantasize about all the things that they will miss out on.

They play football with a plastic bag…they pretend to check out chicks on Bondi beach…they dine out at restaurants and do the wanky wine tasting thing…they boisterously sing rock and roll classics like ‘the last plane out of Sydney’. Atwell achieves plenty of social satire humour especially in one scene where they play a family- father, mother and son- taking off in the family car on a day trip.

This current Bondi Pavilion production is the third time that BONDI DREAMING has been produced. In 2009 Atwell’s play won the Bite- best play in independent theatre award. The main change since its last performance is the use of video sequences that depict snippets of interviews with freaked out relatives of the trio. The sequences are effective, though the film could have been sharper.

For BONDI DREAMING the playwright also takes the director’s chair with the play starring Wayne Bradley (UNDERBELLY) as Macca, Greg Hatton (PACKED TO THE RAFTERS) as Charlie Langer and Christian Willis (CHECKPOINT) as Frankie, with good performances all round.

A talented team of Sydney actors helped with the video sequences including John McNeill, Kate Ritchie, Alex Parkes, Scott Witt, Felix Dean, Annie Byron, Lauren Clare and Jeff Thomson.

Tom Bannerman’s prison cell set worked well, as did the atmospheric lighting design by Nicholas Rayment and the eerie sound design by Alon Isar.

In his directors’ notes in the play’s program, Atwell declared himself a strong opponent of the death penalty and this was clearly one of his main motivations in writing the play. Atwell explained, “I am in strong opposition to the death penalty, and now with Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran seeking clemency, it is even more important to humanise their plight and do what we can to raise awareness in this country. We seek to add our voices to the ever growing movement pleading for a change in their sentence.”

Above all, BONDI DREAMING is a play about how terribly wrong peoples lives can go when they err badly in judgment,and life goes crunch! The hope is that Chan and Sukumaran can get Presidential clemency so that their sentences can be reduced from the horror of the firing squad to life time internment. There is an online petition to the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that can be signed at mercycampaign.com.

A co-production of Dreamhouse Artists in association with the Tamarama Rock Surfers Theatre Company, BONDI DREAMING opened at the Bondi Pavilion theatre on Wednesday 9th November and runs until Saturday 3rd December, 2011.

(c) David Kary

13th November, 2011

Tags: BONDI DREAMING, Sam Atwell, Tamarama Rock Surfers, Dreamhouse Artists, Bondi Pavilion Theatre, Scott Witt, Felix Dean, Wayne Bradley, Greg Hatton, Christian Willis, John Dunn.