This new Australian melodrama is set in a dark, exotic and supernatural version of Far North Queensland at the end of the nineteenth century.
The story tells of Lady Constance Drinkwater’s struggle to hold her settlement, Somerset, together against the mounting dangers that threaten to engulf her world. A real melodrama, not at all like the mock-melodramas seen more regularly, this piece is brilliant new Australian writing.
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Some thoughts from the author Stephen Charlton:
"The play's inspiration for me stemmed from being a child of the Australian 'Deep North'. I was born in the Atherton Tablelands. I was raised in Darwin, and was six when Cyclone Tracy flattened our house and much of Darwin with it; and I subsequently grew up with a sense of the fragility and precariousness of 'permanent' settlement in that region of the world.
Darwin's been routinely devastated by cyclones and war-time bombing over the duration of its 140 year history, and I've become kind of romantically fascinated with doomed settlements, ghost towns, and transitory European attempts at 'civilisation' not just in Australia, but across the broad span of imperialism's reach..........more |
