Hush

After a major COVID-19 cancellation, New Ghosts Theatre Company makes a second attempt at a landing at Sydney’s Flight Path Theatre. Success comes this time, with a packed, highly delighted audience feasting on Ciella Williams’ taut text. The 24 all-female photographs in the foyer proclaim this Darwin-based company’s big difference: their world is populated solely by women.

Inside a Darwin natal hospital two young women, unpartnered, are preparing to give birth. Ainsley (Zoe Jensen) is feisty, gritty and ready for anything; Nina (Clementine Anderson) is her opposite. Uncooperative with the staff and uncertain whether she’ll even be keeping her premature baby, Nina drops in and out of reality.

With nary a mention of how her baby got started, Nina wrestles with what to do next. Should she just hand her – yes, it’s a girl - over to the needy, supervising nurse (Rachael Chisholm)? Her flighty mother (Sasha Dyer) appears in hospital gear and the two discuss options. Mum is uncertain how to cope with her mood-driven daughter, and there are hints of a violent past to this relationship.

Another visitor, Bee (Stella Ye), arrives with her guitar and the two discuss great times together. Bee is all for Nina giving up the baby and having further fun on the road. But this is complicated by a later visit when Bee is clearly marked around her neck and upper body. Perhaps life is not as rosy as she paints it.

Of the cast, Clementine Anderson and Zoe Jensen stand out, not least for successfully challenging the noise of the constant incoming aircraft.

The simple but effective setting of two movable hospital beds plus an intensive neonatal care unit, all surrounded by white drapes, is just fine (designed by Cj Fraser-Bell and Ruru Zhu). The constant movement from hospital reality to Nina’s imagination presented a challenge that this audience loved to accept.

The moving play is carefully directed by Lucy Clements who is taking the whole cast to Darwin next. Big things can be expected from New Ghosts.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Clare Hawley.