[2014052] The Boat Goes Over The Mountain
Happy Dagger Theatre @ Holden Street Theatres – The Arch
8:00pm, Sun 23 Feb 2014
In low light, with the stage dominated by a large wooden skeletal shape that looked a bit like the structural frame of a ship, stood Andrew Hale. He explained that he was feeling listless and, despite being relatively comfortable (using a traditionally Western definition of “success”), lacking purpose. Something was missing in his life, and he didn’t know how to find it.
And I’m totally on board. Hale’s casual, identifiably Australian banter – not to mention the emotional unease he described – really connected with me… hey, I’m the King of Malaise, don’t-you-know.
With a rapid-fire series of events that seemed so reasonable at the time – and so inexplicable to my memory now – Hale found himself on a plane to Peru, signed up for a retreat in which he was to partake in a series of ayahuasca ceremonies. After losing his luggage – a nice metaphor for jettisoning his mental baggage – he then starts describing his journey.
Things don’t start well: his first encounter with the psychedelic substance (and the ritual behind its consumption) scares him, but he finds some solace in comparing his experience to the eleven others on his retreat: the trips of “T”, an athletic kick-boxer, sound far worse than Hale’s. There’s another Aussie in the group – James, who happened to live fifteen minutes from Hale – who provides companionship, but much of the text is focussed on Hale’s personal tussles with psychedelic enlightenment.
Or was is enlightenment? The subject is barely broached; in retrospect, The Boat Goes Over The Mountain feels more like a mental deconstruction that just happened to have some ayahuasca along for the ride. It represents Hale’s fight with his own notions of himself; psychedelics just game him the impetus to engage in the battle.
Hale’s storytelling delivery is beautifully weighted, with softer passages combining with the low light and odd shapes of the frame to create an almost dreamlike ambience. When he battles with the drug – or, worse, its projectile side-effects – the tension in his voice rises, the volume increasing with it… but the monologue rarely loses its poetic nature. And the supporting roles in the production are superbly managed: the wooden frame is turned and tipped to act as a ship, a climbing rig, supports for hammocks, and even percussion. Craig Williams remains onstage throughout, adding to the ambience through sticks and strings, and the performance is bookended by songs.
The Boat Goes Over The Mountain certainly was a curious and creative theatrical experience; there was a lot of enjoyment to be had, drinking in Hale’s tumultuous experiences. And whilst I readily identified with his starting point, and can certainly see the appeal of the end point, his path in-between (frankly) terrifies me; but maybe that’s the point, really. Maybe that’s why I offer myself up to these stories… looking for the adventures I wouldn’t have myself.
(52) The Boat Goes Over The Mountain: Dreamy (and occasionally nightmarey) hallucinogenic narrative w/ polished staging. #ff2014 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 23, 2014