THE SIRENS’ RETURN is a concert (with dialogue) set in a spectacular seaside setting. Port Kembla pool is a treasure, sheltered from suburbia by hills of shrub and grass, its restored historical buildings melding into a long beach winding to Gerringong and escarpment mountains beyond.
The pool is both a natural amphitheatre and an aquatic stage, with two tiled thrusts providing perfect performer walkways.
No song list or libretto was available – however Daryl Wallis (musical director) aimed for a eclectic and experimental style, and with the help of five highly accomplished singers (Alice Ansara, Matilda Brown, Marlene Cummins, Di Smith, Billie Rose Prichard and Kerrie Sweeney) this was without doubt achieved. It is difficult without a song list to credit individual performances – Marlene Cummins stood out in assured blues style, but then all singers were all on par on a very high bar.
The evening was entertaining and high calibre with a talented band and tech crew. Particular note can be made of writers (Barbara Nicholson, Ali Jane Smith, and Anne-Louise Rentell). It was not clear who was responsible for different songs, or for the concept of the show as a whole, but the impression was that many of the songs were well crafted and deploying oral history material well.
Any doubts about outdoor staging were part reassured with the use of state of the art WIFI individual headsets. These had good sound qualities, although their use did change the nature of the audience/theatrical experience, taking one step into a virtual individualised reality. This might not be a bad thing – theatre is continually being challenged technologically. It was interesting to compare this acoustic method to traditional speakers – there might have been factors we cannot know in the choice between the two. However, one challenge in staging an outdoor performance near the presence of an ocean – acoustic – was certainly solved.
The show has a thematic framework. It chose to honour experiences of females in an iconic Australian industrial centre, and much of its content, including lyrics, was shaped by oral histories that preceded the show’s development. Wallis and the singers displayed strong ability to integrate spoken English and song. One point where the reliance on everyday interviews jarred, was at the very beginning – the first sounds were of the director Anne Louise Rentell with a local resident. One can wonder if this matched the expectation of the sublime twilight setting. This interview was followed by a rich welcoming acoustic by Wallis – part of a spectrum of experimental varied composition.
The show has such good resources, talent and content. Drawing on oral histories collected from women living across different eras of the steel town, as well as First Nations and western mermaid mythology, THE SIRENS’ RETURN honours the diversity of women’s experiences through the emotional power of song. It justifies its seaside setting through a metaphor of stories coming from beneath the surface, and the mermaid tale, an exquisite childhood story of seaweed and a skinny dipping 13 year old, unfortunately mixed up with a contradictory story of rape.
The director has a two decade interest in the old Port Kembla shopping strip. This street has a strange cinemagraphic quality since a new shopping centre was opened 30 years ago at Warrawong, five minutes drive away. The steel mill has been active in all that time – the shopping centre has not. I am sure the director tossed up between alternative sites in the township at which to stage her material.
Given the production concept this show could have been developed in just about any coastal town in NSW. That is, it is not particularly site specific – although like any local history it means more to a local audience. Yet the peculiar features of Port Kembla – vast industrial plant, generations of migrant labor, a traditional and active port, a harbour – the distinct story of the Port and the opportunity for a theatrical work to probe a layered and nuanced archeology of society and self, to place incidental voices in a modernist coastal epic that also reaches truly though share landscape out to the indigenous – this was not fully realized, not in the bucolic setting or in the content as a whole. Music could extend to industrial discordant sounds, and yes, perhaps males really do need to be present. Siren inspired costumes were sleek (Katja Handt) but surely some changes to everyday work clothes (the staple of the working women) would have also been possible. Perhaps a further voice – of poetic narration, in the tradition of Dylan Thomas and Under Milk Wood, or Charles Olson’s multi volumed Maximus reflections on Gloucester, a fishing town in Massachusetts, could further prise the array of perspectives.
To ask for more is not in itself a strong criticism – it means a lot was accomplished in this show, and without doubt it greatly pleased its audiences. One after show interlocutor on opening night commented she enjoyed the show so much she could imagine watching it in her local club, with beer and chips! With sunlight gone and lighting (Travis Kecek) more visible, we could be sitting in any space, theatrical or otherwise, and in any geography. On the other hand a fully aquatic stage with such tiled splendour as its set is a rare space indeed – something the local club can’t quite match.
A further opportunity to engage the local, industrial and historical with universality, lyric and myth, in the element of water, was graphically present at the very end, as Matilda Brown looks out over the pool balustrade to embankments by the shore, to where she contemplates long gone aboriginal burial sites. What happened to those bodies, she asks, in what could well be the point of departure for the work overall.
This is not to deny that the show, as presented, in its songs and setting, was an undoubted success in itself, and a brave enough event to mount in our inclement Summer.
A co-production by Merrigong Theatre Company and The Society of Histrionic Happenings, THE SIRENS’ RETURN is playing the Port Kembla Pool until Saturday 19th February. The season, which commenced on Monday 14th February, 2022, has sold out.