by Joan Didion
seen at the Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney) on 11 January 2020
Lars Jan and the Early Morning Opera group devised this staged adaptation of Joan Didion's celebrated essay on culture and counter-culture in the 1960s, with Mia Barron taking the principal part of reciting the text, five others taking minor parts, and a score or so of 'volunteers' providing the crowd background. It is part of this year's Sydney Festival.
On a bare stage with a wide box-like space at the back fronted by perspex floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors people mill about until the performance starts. Then an introductory exercise stills the cast (and the audience) and the recitation begins. Some aspects of the events Didion recounts and ruminates upon are acted out, or emblematically evoked, either on the stage or within the box: there is a particularly effective use of the white wall at the back to create slogans during the sequence concerning university sit-ins, and a slow motion enactment of gun violence in relation to the Manson murders.
