Like an
archaeological dig site, a mound of sand intrudes upon Griffin’s corner stage,
bursting through a window, cascading downwards onto the sandy carpet. Through
the window, a garden, dark leafy foliage. And inside the house? Well, there’s
an argument going on, an argument perfected and cemented over time, and we’re
thrust headfirst into the world of Sophie, a twenty-something archaeology
student, her “mad Arab” family and her girlfriend Sam. There is no question of
where we are, familially-speaking, and as the play’s ninety-odd minutes unfold before
us, we shift backwards and forwards through time, through memories and stories,
half-truths and disguises, dreams, sleepless nights; family history, anxious projections
and conversations with people who can’t be there anymore.
Donna Abela’s Jump For
Jordan won the 2013 Griffin Award, and is presented here in its
premiere production in conjunction with the Sydney Mardi Gras by Griffin Theatre
Company. As described in the script’s notes, “the scenes in the play are often
constructed of layers of narrative that collapse in on each other... Attention
must be on context as well as content. The borders between scenes are intended
to be porous.” To use the
archaeological metaphor again (it is apt, after all), Abela’s play digs
through several layers of accumulated strata, sifting fact from fiction, family
stories from emotions and reality, and the result is a beautiful and moving exploration
of identity, culture and relationships, both romantic and familial, and trying
to reconcile all the disparate elements of your life with one another.
There are many
beautiful moments throughout the play, with several subtle and clever allusions
to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
which, alongside the various mythic echoes and refractions, lends the play an
added layer of meaning, an additional mode of storytelling. While Alice’s
adventure is ostensibly nonsensical, Sophie’s is not, and it is through
storytelling and (more than) a bit of creative license that she is able to make
sense of her own. There is a tender scene, a conversation between Azza and
Sophie, late in the play which best encapsulates this. Azza, perhaps both the
Red Queen and the Hatter all at once, tells Sophie the story of her aunt Layla
and how she found a purpose through telling stories to the children in the
Jenin refugee camps in the West Bank. Told by Azza in predominantly single
words, each word is so crucial, so heartbreakingly and painstakingly chosen
that you can hear the effort, the personal struggle it takes to do so. You can her
it, feel it, see it, almost touch its power, and yet it is beautiful, and it is
just one example of Abela’s gentle, considered and fierce brushstrokes with
which she has drawn the play.
Brought to life by
director Iain Sinclair and the cast, there is an honesty and a rawness, an
emotional weight and a political urgency to the play which makes it sing. There
are some moments where the delivery of a line or perhaps a scene is pushed dangerously
towards hysterical, but it never lingers or lasts. We can feel the frustration Sophie (Alice
Ansara) has towards her mother and her expectations; we can feel the unsureness
and restlessness of Loren’s (Sheridan Harbrdidge) feelings towards her
impending marriage; we feel – and see – the love and desire for Sophie, and to
help her figure her crazy messy life out, pouring out of Sam (Anna Houston) and
we want to help too. We initially see Alice’s mother Mara (Doris Younane)
through Sophie’s eyes but we soon see how she has made immense sacrifices to be
in Australia, how much she is perhaps still uncomfortable in this country, how
much she still dreams of Jordan. We see in Azza (Camilla Ah Kin) a gentle
fierceness, a catalyst for change and for growth, for redemption and
understanding, as well as a very entertaining fantasy exaggeration of her
directness and her forcefulness in the Avenging Azza character. In Sahir (Sal
Sharah), Sophie’s dead father, we feel the sacrifice made to start again in a
new country, a land of possibility and new beginnings, a man desperate to
embrace everything in his path and to make sure his wife and family have the
best they can. Through his ghostly presence (a bit like Ellen’s cricket-mad
father in This Year’s Ashes from Griffin’s
2011 season), we see a man who accepts Sophie and Sam’s relationship as it is,
doesn’t ask questions about it, accepts them for who they are, and there’s a
really lovely scene between Sam and Sahir as they share a kebab in a desert roadhouse,
surrounded by desert wildflowers, somewhere in the centre of Australia.
Just as Azza is
the catalyst for Sophie’s coming to grips with who she is and where she’s
going, so too perhaps is Sahir, a kind of White Rabbit if we are to extend the
use of the Alice in Wonderland motif.
Sahir had a dream of a better future; not only did he dream the dream, but he
also believed it, made it happen. And in many ways, Sophie has to do the same,
and it is both Sam and Azza, with Sahir’s help, who enable her to do so. Like
Rita Kalnejais wrote in 25 Belvoir Street,
Jump For Jordan is a play about
grace, and learning to accept the grace of others.
Grace becomes most visible in
the face of disaster. When everything’s going to shit, grace presses out like
red leaf patterns from the chaos… Grace is what catches you when you’ve lost
control and you’re free-falling… At the moment of grace our hearts are
exquisite, raw and open and we are guided by them… When I sit in a dark theatre
and someone on stage reveals the truth of their heart to me and I feel my own
beat in response – I feel grace… It’s the miracle of humans being revealed
together.
Jump For Jordan has a beating heart, a conscience, a
big-heartedness, a wanting fierceness, a disarming gracefulness which catches
us and the characters as we fall into it. Politically charged, Abela never lets
the politics or the political realities of the past intrude upon the story
being told; they are just details, threads in the magic carpet that Azza (in
her Avenging guise) shares with Sophie. Theatre is essentially a conversation,
between a playwright and an audience, facilitated by a script and the cast and
crew’s work. It is a dialogue between two parties, a discussion, and in many respects,
Jump For Jordan is the perfect play
for Australia now. Not only ‘just’ about marriage equality (albeit in an
oblique way), it is also about the immigrant experience, about cultural
diversity and tolerance, about the preservation of cultural and anthropological
history, about contemporary twenty-first century Australian life. If this play
can help facilitate a broader cultural discussion, or become a voice in the
discussion, then its legacy and impact will be just as assured as its writing
and performance.
Just as Sam often
asks Sophie to ‘interrogate the artefact,’ so too is Sophie asked to
interrogate herself and her family’s past. Just as no real conclusions can be
conclusively drawn from a first impression of an artefact, so too can no real
understanding about a family’s history be made from preconceived ideas and
family legends. It takes understanding, compassion, empathy and a bit of sifting
through layers of emotions and emotional baggage before you can arrive at a
conclusion. And when Sophie does make her conclusions about herself, her
relationships and her family, the ending is just as you’d hoped it would be.
While charged with the potential to descend into saccharine romantic-comedy territory,
it navigates its path with aplomb, heart and soul.
It’s like Sophie
says early on in the play:
I think a Western society
doesn’t understand [this]. It’s rare here, but in Jordan [there’s] a huge sense
of family spirit. We’re genuinely close. It’s not that we have to be like this,
it’s that we are.
Theatre playlist: 11. Jump (For My Love), Girls Aloud
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