Review: Lorilei - A Meditation on Loss

Lorilei: A Meditation on Loss
By Tom Wright
Richard Wherrett Studio, Sydney Theatre Company
25th September 2007

Like a predatory shadow the cycle of life is always followed closely by the cycle of death. It’s 1992 and in the state of Louisiana, in the American deep south, a six year old boy has gone missing after going out to play.

His mother, Lorilei Guillory (Anna Galvin) is facing guilt, anxiety and torment as a search begins to find her little boy Jeremy. Helicopters, sniffer dogs, the whole county Sherriff’s office and the FBI. It’s the stuff of Hollywood movies and mid-west crime documentaries.

Not far from where Lorilei is staying with her son, a known paedophile, Ricky Langley (Tom Wright) has moved into the area and is immediately accused of being responsible for the disappearance of the six year old Jeremy. He confesses to murdering the boy and is immediately put on trial.

This play from the Sydney-based playwright Tom Wright, is based on the true story around Lorilei Guillory, following her as the grief-stricken mother to her role as an opponent to the death penalty, fighting for her son’s killers life.

Delivered with beautiful simplicity as a monologue, Lorilei sits at a big table, dwarfed by the cavernous studio in the back of the Sydney Theatre complex. Through these confessional insights, the audience is not so much a passive participant but is forced to become a confidant to the woman who goes to hell and back and then is outcast by the society around her because “I can’t stand by and see him put down. The killing has to stop.”

This is a stunning theatrical work, directed with a deft touch by Nicholas Harrington and supported beautifully by lighting designer Richard Vabre. It is a production that forces you to listen and forces you to take a position on the violence that is sanctioned by so many levels of our community.

By setting this play in the removed world of the American deep south, Wright forces Australian audiences to look at our own state and the complicity it has in other murders. When, indeed, will the killing stop?


This show is only on for five performances until tomorrow night.
For further information, go to sydneytheatre.org.au