"Boy Overboard" – A play review, Australian Young People’s Theatre, Riverside Theatre, Parramatta, 19-31 July 2005 – review by Tony Kevin

 

[NOTE: I haven’t overlooked the Khaleed Daoed sentencing last week, but the case is still sub judice until the allowed time for a possible appeal expires. I will have further comments about this trial and how it fits in the broader SIEV X history when it is legally allowable for me to do so. Until then, my earlier commentaries on the case, on my website, stand].

 

Tampa, "children overboard" and SIEV X are lightly recalled in an entertaining new play for young people, "Boy Overboard", produced by the Australian Young People’s Theatre, at Parramatta Riverside Theatre, Sydney, season 19-30 July 2005. This play is based on Morris Gleitzman’s acclaimed novel for young people, "Boy Overboard", adapted for theatre by Patricia Cornelius.

I have not yet read Gleitzman’s book – I will certainly now do so.

The play charmingly and movingly dramatises his fictional novel, showing one family’s journey from persecution in Afghanistan, by truck to a refugee camp in Pakistan, then by air to Indonesia by air, and by people smuggler boats to interception by Australian border security ships and removal to offshore internment. The play ends with family members still detained behind wire fences, waiting hopefully to be allowed to go to Australia.

The story is told through the experiences of a young man Jamal ( played by Ashwin Gore) and his sister Bibi (Emily Edmonds). The staging is imaginative and effective. The young actors, many still at Sydney high schools, are excellent in their ensemble roles as Afghani people, people smugglers, and Australian border security personnel.

The play is not didactic or propagandistic in any sense – it is exciting entertainment and had my 11 year old children delighted and entralled with its simple story of danger, flight and rescue. The theme of soccer is pivotal, as a metaphor for common humanity and universal human empathy. What sustains young Jamal and Bibi through all their ordeals is the firm belief that soccer, the game played by the same rules around the world, should unite us all and teaches a sense of fair play to us all. "We may not live in Manchester, but we are all united", says Jamal.

Themes of the right to flee from life-threatening oppression and terror, the rights of women to be educated, the pain of losing one’s loved and familiar home however hard life could be there, the key importance of family loyalty, the truth that saving human life matters more than even our most precious possessions, that we survive adversity only by helping and sharing with others, all come though the skilfully and lightly crafted plot-line. The play is fast-moving and truly fun to watch.

For me, there were darker themes resonating. I heard echoes of the experience of the people on Palapa and Olong – why did the asylum-seekers have to wait so long to be rescued from their sinking boats, long after they were detected by Australian border security forces? And echoes of SIEV X, in the grim tale of the second sunken boat. The shame and distress of the young Australian sailor in admitting that "We could not rescue you till all the paperwork had been done in Canberra", and that many Australians did not want the asylum-seekers in Australia. A powerful theatrical device here – Jamal who has been speaking fluently and gracefully throughout the play suddenly is asking the sailor, heartbreakingly, in now heavily accented and clumsy English, " Why can’t we come Australia ? Australians not want us?". What better metaphor for our failure to hear and understand the plight of asylum-seekers.

See this play and take the kids or grandkids – it’s great professional entertainment, well worth the trip to Parramatta Riverside Theatre.

Tony Kevin, Canberra 24 July 2005