Blue – REVIEW
Image: Thomas Weatherall in BLUE at Belvoir St Theatre. Photo by Joseph Mayers
Belvoir’s first show of the year is Blue, one of the many highlights of the Sydney Festival’s Blak Out program.
The Blue of the title could refer to the depression endured by the production’s protagonist Mark as he journeys through adolescence or the blue may represent the tranquility that he craves.
What makes this one-man show even more remarkable is that it is written and performed by 22-year Kamillaroi man Thomas Weatherall, best known to audiences as Malakai Mitchell in the recent Netflix reboot of Heartbreak High.
As Weatherall enters the stage he engages eye contact with the audience and begins a monologue that over ninety minutes takes them through his most intimate family secrets while telling us one of his own; he wants to be a writer.
His journey is made all the more poignant in that this is told from the perspective of growing up Indigenous and in circumstances that could have easily have led him down the pathway of bitterness and self destruction, which he narrowly avoids.
As his narrative unfolds Weatherall peppers his text with humour, none more so than after moving in with girlfriend Effie when he describes the four stages of love with the analogy of a fire starting in a house.
Written as a 2021 Balnaves fellow, Weatherall says that Blue is a very personalised fiction inspired by his own diaries that were produced as a way of dealing with loss and depression while growing up.
What gives this production additional impact is that we are mostly used to seeing modern adolescence through the eyes of social media such as Tik Tok, but Blue is a well developed monologue on the subject written raw by someone barely out of adolescence himself.
Directed by ex- Bangarra senior artist, Deborah Brown, Weatherall’s previous dance training is put to good use, as he owns the stage during its many transitions.
Jacob Nash’s set is a simple textured cyclorama with an embedded water feature that makes the most of Bergman’s video projections and Chloe Ogilvie’s use of white light.
Through the course of the production Weatherall is figuratively naked on stage, nowhere to hide with a chair as his only prop.
That he pulls this off would be a feat for someone with much more stage experience, but in Blue we are witnessing a young actor give a remarkable performance from his own text.
With only 18 performances scheduled this show calls for a return run in the near future.
