When Matthew Lutton was growing up in Perth, he experienced a West Australian rite of passage — an encounter with Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet. Lutton, the artistic director of Malthouse Theatre, recalls having a near-visceral reaction to the book’s ability to portray both the mundane and the epic in a way that was fiercely Australian. The strange beauty of the 1991 novel is the basis for one of Malthouse Theatre’s most ambitious productions to date.
“Cloudstreet was the only book I was asked to read in high school that I really loved,” Lutton says, a wistful note creeping into his voice. “I loved the talking pig, the moments out on the river as the characters step into another dimension, the young man hallucinating in the field, running away from his family. [It explores] both the everyday and the extraordinary.”
In May, Malthouse will translate the much-loved tale of the Lambs and the Pickles, a pair of working-class families that flee the country to live side by side in a rambling Perth terrace during the ’40s and ’50s, into a sprawling production starring Benjamin Oakes as Fish Lamb and Brenna Harding as Rose Pickles. The play runs for five hours and was originally adapted for the stage by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo. It’s part of Lutton’s commitment to exploring the “multidimensional” nature of classic Australian stories as well as their relevance to a new generation.
"Every character has a chance to step into a life and out again"
It’s a creative instinct shared by Sarah Goodes. Goodes, associate artistic director at the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), is in the process of directing a new production of Così, Louis Nowra’s 1992 play about Lewis, a broke university student who finds himself overseeing a version of Mozart’s opera Così Fan Tutte in a mental institution, loosely based on the writer’s experiences working in Melbourne’s Mont Park asylum as a 20 year old. For Goodes, Così, which challenges the way society ‘others’ outsiders, speaks to the growing 2019 conversation that aims to lessen stigmas around mental illness. She says that the play’s context, an early ’70s Australia dealing with the shadow of the Vietnam War, reveals political rifts that shed light on our own cultural moment.
Cosi, Photograph: Supplied
“In theatre, actors transform into different characters and audiences momentarily transform [alongside] them, and Così is such a beautiful example of this,” says Goodes, who was first introduced to Così when it was adapted into a 1996 film featuring Toni Collette and Ben Mendelsohn. The play hasn’t been performed at the MTC since 1994.
“If you read Louis Nowra’s story, his family was plagued by mental illness and directing the play was an act of confronting it. The characters in Così are just like us but their challenges are amplified so the play is an opportunity to be with them and not judge them. The context of the Vietnam War and how divisive it was for Australian society has parallels with the times we’re living through now.”
Cloudstreet, which revolves around the church-going Lambs and the hedonistic Pickles, could also be read as a story about the things that divide us. But for Lutton, reimagining the play for the current moment means drawing attention to hidden threads in the narrative. It’s also about creating radical possibilities for characters such as Fish Lamb, who nearly drowns in the Swan River during a family picnic and becomes intellectually disabled as a result.
"[Cloudstreet] is about how to live while taking responsibility for things that you weren’t alive for"
“I’m excited by the history of the house in Cloudstreet, which in the book is a rendition of an Indigenous missionary – in this version, we elevate that story to a different degree,” says Lutton. “Ben Oakes is playing Fish Lamb, and it’s very exciting to have an actor with a disability – when you have a performer with a disability, it is no longer performed. We have Indigenous actors playing roles that aren’t necessarily Indigenous. Every character has a chance to step into a life and out again. Rather than romanticising, there’s an emphasis on being truthful.”
Cloudstreet and Così deal with heavy themes: dysfunction, illness, fear of abandonment by people who love us. But there’s an optimism that defines the way Lutton and Goodes handle a 2019 reworking of these stories. For Lutton, it’s a focus on how people can access the divine during deeply human moments.
“It’s all in the title, ‘Cloud’ and ‘Street’ and more than any other production, this one tries to capture the novel’s big ideas, its vast transcendence,” says Lutton.
For Goodes, it’s about finding hopefulness through art.
"[Nowra's] family was plagued by mental illness and directing the play was an act of confronting it"
“[Production designer] Jonathon Oxlade and I wanted to create a playground for these extraordinary actors because these characters have been betrayed by their families — [Così] is about how creating something out of nothing brings hope and joy,” she says.
Lutton says that although Cloudstreet is set in post-war Australia, it also shows us how the past exists in the present moment.
“I think [Cloudstreet] is about how to live while taking responsibility for things that you weren’t alive for,” he says. “I hope audiences take away the sense of how important it is not to marginalise the past.”
Cloudstreet is at Malthouse Theatre from May 6 to June 16. Così is at Melbourne Theatre Company's Southbank Theatre from April 30 to June 8.