Review: The Unfolding Wife

The Unfolding Wife by Paschal Daantos Berry
Urban Theatre Projects & Blacktown Arts Centre
26 April 2007


Escape out of inner city Redfern, into the car, purge the Thursday evening peak-hour traffic to the expressway, and then plant ourselves into the heart of Sydney's great sprawling suburban palate.

Dim street lights hover over the terracotta carpet of roofs. It's quiet from the road.

We find our way to the Arts Centre, a very new, very contemporary and very impressive new venue that has been built to celebrate the cultural arts of Blacktown and its people. The venue sits elegantly next to the flashing bulbs of the Blacktown Workers Club. Bling bling.

It's amazing how many familiar faces I see there. It's a friendly and convivial environment and a measured anticipation suddenly builds as people quickly down their complimentary bottle of San Miguel beer. Welcome to the Philippines.

Entering the curtained off space, we are welcomed by the sound of classic Manila hits of the 1970's & 80's. Valerie Berry, sister of the playwright, is standing centre in nothing but her underwear. Her two attendants (protagonists?) start to play prop and costume games, dressing and de-robing her. They are symbolic representations that explore femininity, ethnicity, physical limitation and culture. They also accompany the music and whisk us off to Pacific Asia. We are now in the world of the Marcos'. Imelda and Ferdinand, that is.

This inaugural performance to open this new cultural hub brings a simple story of an individual, observing her place as a newly arrived migrant in Australia. But as with a really good book, it flips you around and confronts you with an epic storyline that drags out the weight of Spanish cultural colonialism, inter-generational influence, US foreign politics, third world poverty and Imelda's shoes.

The performance is delivered as a monologue of short chapters of history, of reflection. But we start at the end, go to the beginning and then explore all the bits in between. We travel from the Philippines to Australia. We visit the characters of this young woman's life. Her father, her mother and her grandmother.

While we are led through the chapters, the two attendants play at the foot of the stage using projection and multimedia images to provide a frame and another dimension to the story.

There are sometimes simple images and at other times more filmic representations that subtly lift this beautiful text based performance. Multimedia performance is a hard genre to pull off, because of the simple clash of two-dimensional with live action. This performance works most powerfully when the multimedia elements and the spoken word come crashing together and you can see the performer and the light of projection start to blend and mesh.

I really do try to see productions a bit earlier in the season, but I only managed to get to The Unfolding Wife on Thursday eve. It finishes tonight, but this show is a stunning exercise in performance art and theatre that has a earthy theatricality and celebrates simple story-telling.

It is a beautiful production which sits with you and it is the images of a wife unfolding her vulnerability that will startle even a passive observer.


Image: Valerie Berry, courtesy of UTP