When somebody disappears without explanation you can’t fail to notice, as you process the excruciating painfulness of it, that the experience is also a curiously powerful one. The suspension of normality, a heightened awareness of every possibility around you – the ongoing lack of any resolution fundamentally skews your perspective on the world. The sense that discovery, return, some kind of conclusion is imminent around every corner, with every ring of the phone, is debilitating. You live your life in an intense state of suspense that drains all normal experiences of their power to offer any sense of shape or satisfaction.
Unfortunately, resolution is also a quality crucial to drama, and by focusing on an experience that categorically denies it, Sydney company version 1.0’s production creates a piece of work that has intellectual and emotional merit, but that’s profoundly unsatisfying as a theatrical experience. The illusion of movement and development might be suggested by the constant scroll of the full-stage video screen that rolls through suburban landscapes like a constantly searching eye, but this doesn’t compensate enough for the shapeless sense of a piece re-enacting stasis, and leaves me questioning why I am watching it live.
The text, performed by two actors from static positions on either side of the screen, is a collation of verbatim material taken from missing persons cases in New South Wales and further afield. In general, the selected cases imply some undisclosed foul play: bank accounts are untouched, social security cheques remain un-cashed. I find this an odd choice, as such cases are the minority – statistically the most extreme – and the more common experience of disappearance, when an individual has gone with some degree of volition, offers stories at least as unsettling and arguably more universal. The performers’ delivery is radio miked and often deadpan, with a certain opaqueness about the logic of directorial choices such as why the performers stand or address one another at points.
This is a beautifully produced and clearly seriously thought-about production that simply, for me, lacks any theatrical flair. The sound and lighting designs, which feel very present, are heavy-handed (a dramatically tolling bell often underscores discussion of possible death and rows of lanterns sombrely fade down, one by one). Perhaps the company are playing with conventions of the post-dramatic genre, emphasising the artificiality of their form, but there’s a naivety and clumsiness about their approach that doesn’t serve their audience or their material well.