Written by John Harvey and directed by Rachel Maza, Ilbijerri Theatre Company’s Heart is a Wasteland is an Australian postcolonial narrative where ghosts of the past are never far away.
Reverberating with the twang of musician Gary Watling’s melancholy slide guitar, country music singer Raye (Monica Jasmine Karo) sings about love and loss and the pain of experience in all the small towns from Alice Springs to Darwin.
Along the way, Raye meets Dan (Ari Maza Long), a FIFO worker wrestling with his own demons.
A fledgling romance develops from a one-night stand, and the two lovers embark on a road trip.
Before too long, both are tormented by past trauma.
Raye, estranged from her family and separated from her young son Elvis, presents herself with a defiant edge with no time for self-pitying.
The happy-go-lucky Dan eventually breaks down, exposing his underlying trauma.
These two broken hearts reveal restless spirits tormented by dysfunction, dispossession, grief and guilt.
The phantasm of Maralinga casts an ominous shadow, a metaphor for a broken country haunted by the death and destruction of generations of its First Nations people.
Karo and Long develop an easy-going chemistry, sharing jokes and intimacy equally.
When the camaraderie breaks down, however, the sadness is palpable.
Sean Bacon’s simple but wonderfully evocative visuals set the scene beautifully as the action moves from pub to pub and the endless expanse of the open road.
There is no neat resolution.
In the end, an aura of sadness permeates the narrative, echoing the lived experience of many First Nations people.
Performed at the Fairfax.Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne.

• Review by Kathryn Keeble