The Cockatoos |The Blue Room | until November 7th | ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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“You’re here, you made it” says actress Janet Pettigrew directly addressing the audience at the opening of Happy Dagger Theatre’s adaptation of Patrick White’s short story ‘The Cockatoos’.

Soon Pettigrew is joined by a cast of some Perth’s best actors including Writer/Director Andrew Hale, Anna Brockway, Kingsley Judd, James Sollis and Nicola Renton.

Where we are is soon brought to life by a vivid storytelling session that sees the actors performing a ballet of movement and tight dialogue. It’s a suburban street, various people live in the old houses locked behind their front gates.

One resident goes door knocking collecting money for charity and is surprised to find that his neighbour and her husband although living together, haven’t spoken to each other for seven years. Meanwhile a young boy on the eve of his ninth birthday decides to challenge himself by sneaking out of his house and sleeping in the park.

So begins the telling of White’s multi-layered story which at first seems quite simple, but quickly becomes a complex narrative of jealousy, repressed emotions and hidden secrets.

This is the first time one of White’s stories has been adapted for the stage, the Nobel Prize winning author wrote many plays and adapted one of his novels into a film.

Since White’s death in 2003 one of his novels has made it one the screen. Film director Fred Schepisi turned White’s novel ‘Eye of the Storm’ into a film with a screenplay written by Australian actress Judy Morris.

For Andrew Hale who serves as writer, director and performer on this production bringing this story to the stage has been a long labour of love, he first read the novella in Paris in the 1990’s.

It’s a wonderful adaptation because it cleverly maintains White’s highly descriptive and verbose style of writing. The actors throw out lines with one quickly taking over from the next, is perfectly syncopated, with each line cascading over the last one.

Claudia Alessi has coordinated the piece brilliantly, the actors move through the scenes without a pause, using the stage minimalist performance space in a wide variety of ways, always changing where the audiences attention is directed.

The cast of the show are six wonderful actors, there’s no weak link in their chain, they all deliver the goods. Watching Renton, Sollis, Pettigrew, Hale, Brockway and Judd perform I couldn’t help but wonder why they are not utilised by our larger theatre companies more often? All have proven their talents time and time again.

This is a first rate theatrical production.

Graeme Watson, Image: Jon Green

Declaration: It’s a small world, in the past Graeme produced a play that Kingsley Judd was a cast member in, Producer Lauren Foreman was the publicist on the same production.