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Noel Hodda’s brand new play premiering in Sydney at the Flight Path Theatre takes us intimately into the lives of ten interwoven stories.
IN THIS LIGHT shines through two continents, ten lives and twenty years as secrets are revealed and hope arrives with the dawning of a new day.
We cross two continents and the time zones of the past and the present are beautifully realised in this simple yet effective set of Angelina Meany. I loved the gallery motif to link the present and the past. Our simple man, a country artist, was swept off his feet twenty years earlier to now relish his idyll in an isolated country property where he has made his sculpture attempting to tame his own memories into figures that can be swallowed up and reclaimed by nature and touched by the sunrise.
Along with the journey of the characters are the journeys of light throughout the play. Well crafted by Grant Fraser. Creating so beautifully the location and time changes, gently also realised with a most evocative real-world soundscape by Jeremy Ghali.
The play is beautiful and the stories wholly engaged all in attendance. There was enough that we knew throughout the slow reveal of the unfolding narrative.
I am life and I will be free, seems the drive of our young heroine Camille. Played by Omray Kupeli this French performer is quite mesmerising as she captures those around her as much as the audience who witness this stellar performance.
Tom Cossettini brought the young traveller Peter full of banter and bravado beautifully to life as he met Camille and would be entranced and romanced that we would yearn for his redemption at the end.
Sophie Gregg had the hardest task to realise a woman whose tussle with ethical dilemmas Noel Hodda has them erupt within and around her. Sandra and her brother Chris, played by David Adlam, bookend the story in their visit to the Canberra National Gallery.
They find themselves in the room of Van Gogh’s wheat field with crows. A marvellous motif for the plays search for the light in all the darkness and threat to lives. How gently Kate Bookalil’s performance sits alongside the audience, baring witness on our behalf.
The fully-grown Peter, played by David Woodland, has found himself reverted to an obsessive self-serving miser survivor. He is visited by a young French woman who will endeavour to bring him out of his darkness and into the light.
Noel Hodda has bound our journey with all the characters in their completely believable complexities that can only be found in familial conversations and empathetic reality. It is a play about being human, touched by love, life, death and deep sorrow. Des James has wrought these very human, crossed lives and stories ably across time and theatre’s space.
In this light, everything is possible.
IN THIS LIGHT plays at the Flightpath Theatre, Addison Road, Marrickville, until 19th November 2022.
Production photography by Robert Catto
