![‘[Dwight and Moira’s] tender care for each other creates space for them both to find some final moments of grace’ … Contessa Treffone and Tai Hara in On the Beach.](https://media.guim.co.uk/a8c3410359c0c901097e3a48385d3df99fa60f27/0_49_3238_1944/1000.jpg)
In 1957, Nevil Shute, the British aeronautical engineer, Naval Reserve officer and novelist, wrote of the end of all things as we know it in his novel On the Beach. In his version of Melbourne in 1963, nuclear war has wiped out signs of life in the northern hemisphere, and radiation poisoning is drifting on the wind towards the city. With only a few months to go and no way to save yourself, what matters most? Who do we become when the world changes? Can we stop a catastrophe, or do we lean into it?
Here in 2023, Tommy Murphy (ABC’s Significant Others, Holding the Man) has adapted the novel for the stage in a world that is especially sensitive to how close we are to the end. We have been buffeted by natural disasters brought on by the climate crisis; we have lived the eerie twilight of Covid-19 lockdowns; we are gripped by the horror of Russia-Ukraine war. We know very well the tension between destruction abroad and its delayed impact at home. Murphy’s play is still set in the 1960s, but it is suffused with our own dread and hopelessness; it is a much-needed vessel for our grief.
We first meet Peter (Ben O’Toole) and Mary (Michelle Lim Davidson) who look at the end differently, but for the same reason: they have a baby girl, and the loss of her future is unconscionable. Peter clings to hope that the world will right itself, while Mary is much more pragmatic. This is a welcome update from the novel, which dismisses women as unhelpful to their men in times of crisis, indulging in flights of fancy and denying hard truths. Murphy’s script, which blends lines from the book with a deeper and more nuanced exploration of character, is gripping.
When Peter, a navy man, is drafted on to the submarine USS Scorpion for fact-finding, a jumbled transmission from Seattle becomes a promise of relief – but Mary can’t escape the practicalities of their fate. Scientist John Osborne (Matthew Backer) is more sceptical, brought onboard by the government to record the nuclear fallout. Later, we see how he’s coping with the promise of death – he’s bought a Ferrari and is planning to race it in an all-amateur Grand Prix that’s more of a death wish.
Dwight (Tai Hara), a captain and one of just a few Americans who escaped their country’s fate, is living in his own devastating denial, where his dead wife and children are still very present. Peter and Mary introduce him to their friend Moira (Contessa Treffone) in hopes of keeping him occupied. She’s a bright and thriving presence; their tender care for each other (Murphy’s script builds in more emotional complexity here too) creates space for them both to find some final moments of grace.
On the Beach is directed by Kip Williams, STC’s artistic director, who is best known for his cine-theatre approach to productions like The Picture of Dorian Gray, which played sell-out return seasons in Australia and is now heading to the West End with Succession’s Sarah Snook in the lead role. There are no cameras or video screens here: instead, Williams’ elegant, achingly beautiful production places people first, showcasing the vulnerability of bodies reaching for each other on an often spare stage.
Michael Hankin’s set design is evocative of time and space rather than demonstrative, and it gives us very real room to absorb the story. Grace Ferguson’s sound design is stirring and sad, and it dances with Damien Cooper’s lights, which capture something about late light, shadows and absence, making it feel all the more potent when our characters reach out for each other. A set piece is wheeled out to stand in as a pier but is later repurposed to represent Peter and Moira’s veranda and, later, the submarine; just like that, new worlds are summoned.
Sometimes it is the simple theatrical techniques that are the most effective. Large sheets billow in the wind to suggest the threat in the air and it is as moving as poetry. Surprise costume changes and clever choreography transform one character into the ghost of another and it feels like a memory. One final, unexpected image on the stage, which shouldn’t be spoiled, is particularly arresting. Theatre’s aliveness is a gift, and this production of On the Beach is in love with life: the ways we connect, how hard we love, how desperately we try to make something of our time together – even when we know it all ends.
The play finds its way to the novel’s bleak final moments and it’s desperately sad, but it’s not desolate. There is love here, and community and compassion. This production is a hand reaching out for our own, a reminder that we are not yet done and, crucially, we are not alone.
STC’s production of On the Beach is on at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney until 12 August
