The Nest Ensemble’s Wanderings is immediately reassuring. The intimacy of Queensland Theatre’s Diane Cilento Studio is elevated by the staging of its initial cozy home setting of throw rugs, garden greenery in which to enjoy a cup of tea and a whole heap of post-it note reminders. The stationery, we soon learn is for the benefit of Stella (Margi Brown Ash) who has been living there since caring for mother. As her trans son Kidd (Sac Callaghan) tells the audience, following an aged care assessment, Stella will soon be downsizing to ‘a little unit’. This is despite her insistence that she’s able to live alone, happy as she is in her life of contingencies, comfort and her favourite chair from which to write what is now often just gobbledygook.
Stella’s colourful, multi-patterned outfits and busy home surrounds (designer Rozina Suliman), show how she lives her life with vibrance and in Margi Brown Ash’s hands, she fill the Studio space in her every early appearance. And so, as an audience, we laugh along with her misremembering, misunderstanding and mispronouncing in complication. However, her increasing dementia also means that she sometimes forgets that her daughter Jessie has transitioned, which takes us into the multifaceted challenges experienced by two often misunderstood and under-represented communities – our aging population and LGBTQI+ folks, particularly those who are transgender.
“I don’t have much time,” landscaper Kidd often repeats in foreshadow of things to come, as he attempts to pack up a house of items that Stella humorously keeps changing back to the keep pile. And so, it continues ‘every bloody day’ until it is crunch time for Stella’s move into the aged care home. As October moves to May and Christmas and then the new beginning of a New Year’s day thereafter, Callaghan and Olivia Cosham’s (The Joy Dispensary) sound design and Freddy Komp’s production design dull the vibrancy of Stella’s rainbow world. Komp’s lighting design also both warms Stella’s nostalgic wisdom and later aides in acknowledging the passings of time from her initial move out of her own home, with stripped down staging dulling her sense of self.
As a show title Wanderings works on many levels, including literally when Stella disappears, as well as in summary of her mind journeying into itself and a world where memories, identities and timelines are blurred, but fairies and Oscar Wilde live strong. This is an equally witty and wise piece of work, co-written by Brown Ash, Callaghan and director Leah Mercer. The production, presented as part of Queensland Theatre’s inaugural DOOR 3 program is compassionate from its outset as we hear Stella’s words of wisdom and insight, such is the care and attention to detail given to its narrative and emotional arcs. It is perfectly paced, incredibly honest and very real.
This is rich storytelling that easily balances heart, humour and heartbreak. And Callaghan’s monologue as Kidd in plea for his mother to try not to misname him is far from preachy, rather personalising the political and providing insight into the hypervigilance the comes with living his new life. Unseen characters such as Kidd’s religious twin sister Erin, are also handled well in inclusion into the narrative, but only as outsiders, for this really is the story of Stella and Kidd who are both grieving … her, the loss a daughter she can’t remember transitioning and him of a larger-than-life mother whose energy fills every room … until it doesn’t.
As our initial narrator of sorts, Callaghan soon settles into things and Brown Ash’s comfort on stage is immediately evident. There is an authentic rhythm to the duo’s banter, such as when Stella becomes annoyed at Kidd revealing in fourth wall beak to the audience about ‘the kitchen stove incident’ that prompted the need for her move. And there is much humour, not only in Stella’s mistakes, but in Kidd’s reactions to them as his patience sometimes wears thin. Brown Ash gives a tour-de-force performance, journeying us through the extremes of experience living with dementia… the aggression, paranoia, confusion and fear, at-times in all of its ugly honesty.
Wanderings is a beautiful, insightful and accessible 75-minute (no interval) two-hander, that effectively chronicles a journey of forgotten memories, but not necessarily feelings. As such it serves as reminder of many important themes around the importance of belonging and living rather than just existing. It is incredibly authentic in the capture of emotions of its tender telling, easily moves its audience from its first funnies to the moving poignancy of an emotional ending that will resonate long after leaving its experience.
