In conversation with Gail Evans and Nicky Fearn

Image: Gail Evans (left) and Nicky Fearn. Photo by Geoffrey Williams.

Geoffrey Williams sat down with Darwin Theatre royalty – Gail Evans and Nicky Fearn – during their lunch break from rehearsals for the upcoming season of Fair Punishment at Brown’s Mart Theatre.

It’s another glorious afternoon in Darwin, and the Business Unusual company are deep in the final stages of rehearsals for Fair Punishment – billed by Brown’s Mart as “A theatrical, gothic tale of intrigue, revelation, survival and hope to satisfy lovers of mystery, thrillers and true crime”. The perfect pitch full of many of favourite words!

“Isolated on a crumbling estate”, we are told, “two siblings live under the control of their authoritarian Father, where they speak a language and inhabit a surreal Universe of their own imagination. When a cataclysmic event occurs, they are forced to encounter the outside world for the first time, causing their belief system to shatter and expose the startling history of their existence. Fair Punishment will have audiences on the edge of their seats as a complex web of secrecy is peeled off one revelation at a time. This production will share one of the oldest theatrical forms rarely seen on stage today – full-face mask fused with text, as masked and unmasked performers weave this visual masterpiece together.”

Based on the novel La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes by Canadian novelist Gaétan Soucy, Fair Punishment has been adapted for the stage by co-writers Nicky Fearn and Gail Evans. It would be more than reasonable to suggest that Fearn and Evans have what I would describe as ‘form’ in the compellingly contemporary, complex and innately theatrical world of absurdism and the macabre, having championed the work of playwright Stephen Carleton, in particular, for Darwin’s theatre-loving audiences.

Carleton’s 2015 Griffin Award-winning play The Turquoise Elephant – described as a “… shockingly black, black, black political farce”¹ – was directed by Evans at Brown’s Mart in May 2018, starring Fearn. His New Babylon (the companion piece to The Turquoise Elephant), explored themes of decadence, waste, and the logical end points of compulsive consumption, and enjoyed its World Premiere at Brown’s Mart in 2021, directed by Evans, with Fearn reprising her role from The Turquoise Elephant. If yet more synchronicity was required, Merlynn Tong, who Darwin audiences first saw in New Babylon, returns to Darwin to play ‘Alice’ in Fair Punishment. Tong has been enjoying great acclaim in Australian theatres, with her play Golden Blood, in which she also performed, enjoying seasons last year at the Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company.

At the helm of what sounds like a fascinating production is Melbourne Theatre royalty – the award-winning Director, Susie Dee, who has worked extensively in theatre as a director, devisor and performer in Australia and overseas for the past forty years. Most recently, Dee directed Truth by Patricia Cornelius at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre. She was the recipient of the Ewa Czajor Memorial Award for female directors (with a residency with Theatre Du Soleil, Paris), and in 2022 she received the prestigious Australia Council Award for Theatre. Susie has won numerous Green Room Awards* for Directing, most recently for My Sister Jill (Melbourne Theatre Company) winning the 2023 Green Room Awards for Best Director and Outstanding Production.

Brown’s Mart Theatre will be transformed into a world teetering on the edge of fragility and chaos by multi-award-winning set and costume designer Dann Barber. Barber’s impressive list of credits includes work with the Ilbijerri Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, and the Victorian Opera. With five Green Room Awards for Outstanding Scenic and Costume design to his name, audiences will no doubt be captivated by Barber’s vision for Fair Punishment.

GW: So, what on earth attracted you to this cultish, bizarre story of a girl who was too fond of matches? What an experience! I did a little bit of research on it, and I just thought, “My God, is Darwin ready for this?!”

Nicky: Well, I hope Darwin's ready for it because it’s coming! We read the book, and the language and the whole gothic world of this story was just so theatrical and such an awesome mystery with gradual revelations throughout. I'm passionate about full-face character masks, so the two just married – the extraordinary world and extraordinary language coupled with full-face character masks. We've got characters who speak, and we've got masks who are part of the memory world and who come to life, and they can cross-pollinate each other. They can each affect the other in the world we are creating, and I thought it's just such a great story.

GW: And how did you find it?

Nicky: I was living in Melbourne and going to the VCA [the Victorian College of the Arts] doing a course at the time, and I wandered into [the bookshop] Readings in Lygon Street and there was this novel, and it just sort of shouted at me from the shelves and I read it and thought, “Oh, this world is just incredible!”. I really enjoyed the fact that it's about people not understanding each other. We, in our contemporary world, have so much of that, don't we? … where we judge, and we don't get on with communities and people who are different from us. So, it appealed to me. And then Gail said, “Come on, get it off the shelf!”. So, we started to work together, which is great because Gail’s supreme with text and I love the world of mask … it was a really good coming together.

Gail: It was very experimental for us because we didn't know if having full face character masks would work with unmasked actors who could speak. That was always like, “Is this going to detract from the mask or is this going to not work for the spoken word actor?”. But it has blended beautifully together.

GW: Well, you’ve got the great Susie Dee at the helm directing.

Gail: Yeah, we do … at the helm. And the beautiful Merlyn Tong, who also was in New Babylon. She was ‘the chair fucker’, that's how people generally remember her. We've also got Thomas Midena and Melanie Mununggurr … and Susie brought up Dann Barber, who's a phenomenal designer. So, Brown’s Mart is going to be transformed, and I don't think Darwin will ever have seen the like, really.

Nicky: Yeah, the design is very immersive. Pretty much as soon as you enter the space, you're in another world. So, we're pretty excited about that.

GW: Was the text you have adapted an English translation, or have you adapted it from the French version?

Gail: It was the French, which we've had translated. A lot of the storytelling is visual through the masks. Because there's two siblings who live on the estate, one of the siblings is essentially telling the story and the masked character of that same sibling is like their memory that re-enacts a lot of things. So, it might take people a little while to actually figure out the form, but we think it's kind of really interesting and intriguing.

Nicky: And you get so many revelations. You think, “Oh, this is a reliable narrator character”, and then you realise bit by bit that this sibling has grown up in a very bizarre world and their own imaginings and understandings are not as normal as you would expect. So, you get all these little mysteries throughout the piece that come together at the end.

GW: And it appears, even just on a very cursory glance, to say some profoundly confronting things about gender and abuse. And among young people, there's so many conversations going on about the corruption of them through Internet, through isolation, through Adolescence on Netflix just recently, going into that whole ‘incel’ kind of creation. What do you think are some of the most contemporary messages for Darwin audiences that come out of your exploration of this text?

Gail: I think very much as Nikki said earlier, how quite diverse communities can be side-by-side and yet not really have an understanding or an awareness of each other. And sometimes there's acceptance and other times there's fear and mistrust. I think that's very pertinent to the Northern Territory. Gender fluidity is certainly all the way through this piece, so I think that's very contemporary and an interesting thing to raise for audiences. If you don’t know what gender this character is, it's going to take you a lot longer to pigeonhole them or expect them to behave in a certain way and judge them. So, I really like that about it.

Nicky: That's the main thing I like about this piece to be honest – really understanding what contributes and why do people behave as they do. There's elements of trying to unearth that in understanding these siblings and what's happened to them – how they've been brought up and why.

Gail: And the father character is interesting because they do appear to be quite abusive, but at the same time you get to feel pity for this character because you understand that they've actually gone mad from grief and haven't been able to process that. And therefore, they've gone bonkers and raised their children in this bonkers world.

GW: As they seem to do in basements and cellars!

Gail: At least these siblings have the whole estate to roam around on, but they've never left the estate since they were tiny children, so they have no awareness of the outside world. They know there's a village just over the hill, but they've never been there, and no one is allowed to come in because the father has just isolated them.

GW: So, following this up on the back of The Nestmakers … what a great difference between that play and this one. Is that something that you collaboratively want to see more of in Darwin? Less of the by-the-book happy ending?

Gail: We're always attracted to diverse and interesting theatre, I think, and we love making it.

Nicky: And it's great to be able to offer some kind of visually very, very different theatre. I worked for a long time in Europe in full face mask and I've done some of it here, but it's not around much. So, audiences and performers haven't had the opportunity to really see that world brought to life. And I think it's such an extraordinary world and beautiful because the audience really have to get drawn in and work out what is happening. I love the form and especially coupled with really unusual language. I love that kind of visual stuff. And yes, as Gail said, we like to push the boat wherever we can.

GW: And does mask or full hiding of persona give you greater permission as actors or directors or writers for grotesquery when people can't see your face … they have to form another kind of connection with you. I’m thinking of Kabuki in particular. Some people might think that full mask restricts you as an actor, as a performer in your actor/audience relationship. But what does it do? How does it change?

Nicky: Well, it's very interesting to me because yes, you have those kinds of traditional forms of mask, like the Japanese forms – Noh and Kabuki, and more traditional Asian forms of mask characters. Whereas the mask that we're using, they are full face character masks. So, they do draw people in and the minute you put a mask on your face, people think, “Oh, you're hidden as an actor”. In fact, it's the total opposite. You put a mask on and every tiny thing about you and your body and how you hold yourself is magnified for an audience. So, you can do the most delicate, tiny in-breath and that speaks volumes, and 80% of communication is non-verbal anyway. So yes, there is this whole world that you can explore when you take text away.

GW: Does it increase or enhance your permissions as an actor in a story like this with what you can get away with physically in the physical literacy of the piece? How does that change it?

Gail: I guess it depends on the character that you're playing. I play some quite sinister characters in this play – and yes, I find it quite liberating like to inhabit that kind of grotesque and quite brutal character. I find you put that mask on and you kind of let it embody and inform you. Though there are some restrictions that you have to be aware of when you're performing masks. You have to know if you turn your head too far this way, you'll break the reality, so you have to be aware of that too. But yeah, I find it quite liberating and fun because it's like, “Yes! I'm this monster now!”. Mind you, I can do that without a mask!

Nicky: But it does take the audience a while to see the masks at the beginning of the show. It can take a little moment for the audience to drop in and accept how the mask works and the character. But once they're in, they're in.

GW: Who are the masks designed by? Where are they coming from?

Nicky: I've worked with this mask-maker called Russell Dean, and he makes many different styles of masks. Russell and I had long conversations about who these characters are … and what do these masks need to show? Especially around Father, we had conversations about … well, he's not just cruel, he's actually got to be grief-stricken … he's got to be sad. He's got to be able to communicate gentleness at the same time as being completely driven by his insanity. So, we did a lot of talk about that, and Russell created a little maquette of this mask and showed them to us. And then we went back to Russell and said, “Yeah, yeah, that's great!”, so then he made them and posted them to us.

GW: And where's he from?

Nicky: He's based in the UK at the moment. He's the Artistic Director of a company called Strangeface, which says it all.

Image: Fair Punishment promotional image. Supplied.

GW: So, let’s talk about what brought you both to Darwin. Gail, how did you end up here?

Gail: I came up on a six-month acting contract in 1987 to work with the newly formed State Theatre Company of the Northern Territory. They'd just built the Entertainment Centre, and the CLP [Country Liberal Party] ministers had been on this big junket around Australia checking out other theatres, and they were like, “Yes, we need our own state theatre company!” So, I auditioned, and up I came, and I'm still here.

GW: Do we need to wonder what happened to that? Probably not.

Gail: Why? What do you mean?

GW: Well, what happened to it? The company.

Gail: It went belly up within six months. Its first show was The Sentimental Bloke – so big, you know, musical thing. And then we went to Alice Springs and rehearsed there, and we did Dario Fo’s Trumpets and Raspberries. And then we came back here, and I think we did John Romeril's The Kelly Dance, and we also did a theatre and education show, which I think was called Wolf Boy. And then it ran out of money, and that was it. “Here's your ham sandwich and a road map. See you later”.

GW: Nicky?

Nicky: My family had just emigrated from England, and we were living in Sydney, and my mother and stepfather got jobs in education. They got new postings to Darwin, and we were due in December 1974. How about that? Cyclone Tracy. We were on our way up here, or the car was on its way up, when Cyclone Tracy intervened and blew everything away. I arrived with my mother and stepfather in April 1975, and got put on the Patris, the boat that was moored here for essential personnel. My stepfather, John Molesworth, was brought up to get the schools, the teachers, and education happening again. So, 1975 was when I came up, and I've come and gone a lot, as people do. And now I'm here again.

GW: Who was responsible for getting Susie Dee involved?

Gail: Well, Susie had met Nicky earlier, but there was a Brown’s Mart residency, where they get artists to apply who've got an idea that they want to share or pitch, and then they bring in three interstate mentors that you can workshop with or talk about your project. Susie was a part of that residency, and we just really clicked. She loved our concept for Fair Punishment, and we were like, “Would you come up and do a creative development with us?”, and she was like, “Sure!”. And she did, and then we did two [creative developments], and then we're like, “You have to direct this”, And she's like, “Yes, I have to direct this.”.

Nicky: It's amazing having Susie up here, and also having brought Dann Barber, the designer. He’s astounding.

GW: What would be your hope for what audiences might take away from experiencing what sounds like an amazing performance?

Nicky: What drew me to this story is how two groups of people could live so close geographically yet remain so isolated and unaware of each other. My hope is that, while audiences’ appetites for mystery, intrigue and justice are sated by this production, their curiosity and compassion for communities around them are also raised.

Fair Punishment. Based on the translation of the novel La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes by Gaëtan Soucy, 1998 Éditions du Boréal. Adapted by Nicky Fearn and Gail Evans. Produced by Brown’s Mart and Business Unusual. 13–24 May 2025 at Brown’s Mart Theatre, 12 Smith Street, Darwin. You can book tickets here: https://bma1.sales.ticketsearch.com/sales/salesevent/141571

References

1.     https://apt.org.au/product/the-turquoise-elephant-2/

* The Green Room Awards are Australian peer awards that recognise excellence in cabaret, dance, theatre companies, independent theatre, musical theatre, contemporary and experimental performance, and opera.