Chimerica

Chimerica, by British playwright Lucy Kirkwood, is a potent mixture of thriller (‘gripping’), romance (‘modern’) and comedy (‘fast-moving’). It was first staged in Australia by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2017, and its 3-hour length and large, mixed Chinese-Australian cast calls for much resolve and courage. Fortunately, it gets plenty of both at the New Theatre.

Directed by Louise Fischer, the play swirls into life, taking the first night audience along with it, whether it’s in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, April 1989, as the tanks roll in and people run for their lives, or in 2012 New York where photographer Joe Schofield is trying desperately to get his life back into order.

Kirkwood’s play, which won London’s Best New Play 2013 and the Olivier Award 2014, is right in there, exhilarating in the intelligence of its ideas and narrative grip.

The large cast (seventeen actors!) of this prime example of New Theatre’s rich potential have a wonderful time. Oliver Burton is perfect as Joe, the young photographer who happened to be in the right spot at exactly the right time in 1989 and who is haunted by his luck ever since. Les Asmussen is excellent as Frank, his rough, tough editor back in New York.

And Jasmin Certoma is sensational as Tessa, the English woman Joe meets on a plane. She works in market research and consumer profiling, and she says that “China’s moving faster that we can collect the data... this is a nation that’s gone from famine to Slim-Fast in one generation”.

Not to forget Jon-Claire Lee, director of Sydney Talent Company, who is equally excellent as Joe’s main contact in China, teaching English, grieving for his deceased wife who keeps appearing inside his refrigerator.

Fine lighting by Michael Schell and sound by Paris Bell add to the authenticity of the action which is played partly in front of a huge screen featuring images of China, both still and moving, designed by Verica Nikolic.

The massacre at Tiananmen Square is right there, and the young man coming home with two shopping bags, who held up four huge tanks, is celebrated anew.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Chris Lundie