Banjo at Full Gallop

6th July 2009

Publication:

The West Australian

Author:

Pier Leach

The outback mythology of Banjo Paterson’s epic 19th century poem The Man from Snowy River looms large in the imagination of many Australian schoolchildren.

But the rugged, remote world where burly Jack Thompson look-alikes wear moleskins and akubras and gallop along rocky outcrops is a million miles from most of their realities.

Indeed, in a rather sneaky recent pop quiz for nine year olds (conducted by me) asking ‘What is a brumby?’ I was not altogether surprised to be met with a unanimous ‘Duh, a bakery’. A wild horse? Really?

Local writer Mark Storen has capitalised on this kind of youthful city-slicker perspective in his delightfully imaginative adaptation of Paterson’s legendary tale – relocating the story of a perilous outback horse chase to the aisles of a local supermarket (names Paterson’s, of course).

There in the deserted breakfast cereal aisle, a skinny young shelf-packer and trolley collector (Shane Adamczak) lets his fantasies run wild. Between rounding up trolleys and responding to loudspeaker calls to the frozen food section, he imagines his trolley is a horse and it is he who is chasing down the wayward brumby from ‘old Regret’ (Michelle Anderson).

Director Philip Mitchell wrangles Storen’s weird, wonderful, often humorous adaptation into a richly theatrical experience. With live performers (Spare Parts regular Michael Barlow also shows up) and various rod and handheld puppets created in different sizes, Mitchell stages the story with a momentum and pace that is true to Paterson’s stirring verse.

A rotating set is well used to create distance and scale while shadow projections of trees whizzing by, some delightful slo-mo from the cast and Lee Buddle’s mullti-instrument score lend the story the kind of tempo it requires.

I’m not sure what Paterson would have made of Storen’s wacky casting of a bull as his hero Clancy of the Overflow (or, for that matter, shopping trolleys as horses, escalators as cliffs and bottles of dish soap as stockmen), but somehow – between snippets of the poem (Humphrey Bower narrates) – it all gels.

Clancy’s pink-maned My Little Pony-style love interest may be stretching things a little (especially when the bull rides her!), but, hey, I’m all for testing the bounds of poetic licence. Puppet-maker and designer Jiri Zmitko’s tall supermarket shelving set is cleverly multi-functional, though it proves a barrier to the performers’ voice projection at times. A small quibble. These are 50 minutes that fairly gallop by.