Slow Boat | Anna Yen

A fully fledged epic, a tale of adventure and vicissitudes, of hardship and sacrifice and twisty dangers and the brotherhood that endures and makes the challenges livable. No, its not a Greek myth reworked for the modern age, it’s a modern story of Australian immigration. Slow Boat is a play within a play, that details the journeys of some 600 Chinese men in the wake of WWII, who travelled to Australia seeking employment. They started with three years of indentured labour on Nauru, then were shipped to Australia, shunted around the country from Brisbane to Port Augusta, then up to mine in Darwin, then back across to Bulimba to make ships for the Americans, before most of them were unceremoniously packed off back to China. I share the brief synopsis so that you understand the vast scope of the production.

The show was comprised of beautifully articulate choreography in dance, theatre, mime, circus, and more, performed by a cast that were clearly thoroughly competent and extremely deliberate in their movements. The many poses were spot on, every finger in place. Drawing from a range of artistic disciplines, it roughly reflected the styling of Cantonese opera. Which is a kind of theatre for the common person, full of action and colour and wild joy and gallows humour and dirty jokes. And so this was too.

All images: Stephen Henry

I loved the physical interplay, not quite dance or physical theatre or acting but somewhere between the three. From the opening war scene, the crew swaying on the boat, the pickaxes falling in rhythm, the fights and the camaraderie. The occasional overt scene with mime, a risky tool to use, so easily hammed up or made awkward. But in this case, it was done with finesse, and also, restraint.  

The set was beautifully created, huge sweeping swathes of dyed silk-like material, giant oversized columns created to reflect a simple staging such as might have been made to fit a community hall in 1945. The colourful backdrops were changed during scenes, with brash simple scenes in bright primaries. Beautiful made, giving the impression of simpler times, but with great grandeur.

The play was a hefty length and I encourage you to take that into account when going to see the work. Although it arcs and falls, the style of performance has no urgency, each scene is paced very precisely. Advance notice of the length and pacing really helped me to enjoy the show, as I was prepared for its full movie length. Take snacks, settle it, let it wash over and through you.

Learning through fictional narrative is my favourite type of learning. (In this case, fictional historical narrative). There is something about relating to characters on the stage that humanises stories so very much. We can read an article about the relentless inhumanity of the Australian government and the colonial importation of cheap Asian labour, but a depiction of a bloody and brutal desert scene and the rise and fall of pickaxes worms its way into your head in a much more effective way. We still don’t get the full extent of the flies and sun and the twenty months, but we get a little closer, the injustice sings out clearly, we begin the slow process of rehumanising the colony, the de-othering, starting from the first most difficult place, inside our own minds.

The stories of Australian Asian people are under told, hidden, and subverted. Here we get to see a few brought to the surface. We listen also to the many tales of these men building childcare centres and air raid shelters as they were shunted around Australia as cheap wages. Their attempts to be good visitors, good immigrants, good new Australians, and the disrespect they were met with. The strike that was broken through hefty promises that were never delivered. The reminder that underpaying was common for anyone who wasn’t white. (Shades of the current Pacific Labour Mobility program, anyone? )

All images: Stephen Henry

I loved the insight into the gentle Chinese culture of well-wishing and seeing the good in challenges. The generosity of welcome, “Have you eaten?”. “May you live for 100 years.” “Learning is a gift that follows its master everywhere.” So at odds with our own brash, sarcastic Australian mannerisms, where positive phrases are actually aggressively sarcastic. “Living the dream, mate.”

There is a limit perhaps to how much someone with such uncouth knowledge of Chinese life as me could possibly gather in a single sitting. I took a few days to read through the written play afterwards and came to understand that there was a depth of performance that as a White Australian I would never have picked up. The particular slants of the varying accents signalled political affiliations and histories that could only be known by someone with lived experience or very keen interest. If anything, more clarity of this political interplay is what I’d seek for in future seasons, the relationship interaction between the characters leant towards caricature on occasion, and the more complex nuances written into the play did not fully translate.

My friend and I considered whether the show was made to educate white Australian audiences or to connect with Chinese and Asian Australian audiences. We decided both, and the play is clever in that it achieves both without being didactic. Well, a touch perhaps. But packaged up as a grand spectacle, and a lot of fun.

Slow Boat was a lovely motley of dichotomies, simple and complex, a fun time and a deep reflection, a fictional tale, a true history and a new re-imagining, and a whole lot of Australian and Chines cultural touchpoints all jammed into a couple hours on the cheap boards, presenting many worthy morsels to chew on for days to come.