“No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”
So said iIll-fated president JFK, referring to the surreal image of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức sitting cross-legged and perfectly calm as he was engulfed by flames. The Vietnamese monk was protesting against persecution of the Buddhist faith by the government of Catholic president Ngô Đình Diệm. Captured by award-winning photographer Malcolm Browne in 1963, the startling shot is as powerful now as it was then.
What cause would you be willing to die for?
For the biblically named Corinthian, the fictional character holding up Naomi creator Patrick Livesey’s latest breathtaking Fringe solo show, I Hope This Means Something, the answer he winds himself up towards is the climate crisis. Arguably the greatest threat to the planet, tragically it’s one too many of us – and certainly our political leaders – find all too easy to ignore, whether through corrupt financial incentives or fearful paralysis. And yet Corinthian cannot turn away from this seemingly inexorable disaster he’s determined to head off, even if it consumes him.
Raised by a single mum in the bird-flocked wetlands of the Coorong in South Australia, they tend a historical bluestone cottage in the sort of country town where everyone knows your name. There’s a touch of Tennessee Williams’ hothouse drama to Corinthian’s longing for her wavering attentions and baked cake failure-ignited depressions, amplified by M’ck McKeague’s flourishing greenhouse-like set design. Corinthian feels closest to her when they’re tending the garden together, this planted seed unfurling into his passion for the environment. Still, he must get away, heading to the bright, atmosphere-chewing lights of Melbourne, where he’s determined to make a difference.
Corinthian thinks he’s fallen on his feet when he lands a social media gig for an environmental NGO, but it turns out their busy work is just as hollow as real-life environmental ministers who give the ‘green’ light to new coal mines. Lying in bed awake at night seething at this perceived betrayal, his mind burns. As he disappears down online rabbit holes reading up on protestors who self-immolated for the cause, will he be next?
Not everyone who has taken this drastic step has attained the same immortality as Quảng Đức – just one of many bitter truths delivered during this bracing, 80-minute monologue penned by Livesey and directed by fellow writer and performer Benjamin Nichol. Donning bright red tracksuit pants, a t-shirt and a baggy flannel – McKeague is also the show’s costume designer – Livesey’s literal sweat under the unforgiving theatre lights doubles both as a signifier of soaring temperatures globally and the delirium of mental ill health Corinthian experiences, exacerbated by his frustrations.
Despite leaping between a wealth of characters – including Corinthian’s mum, co-workers and those on the front line as rising waters lap at the edges of doomed communities – the show’s never confusing and constantly engaging, even if some of the blows rightly punching up feel a little too blunt. That’s forgivable in a blazing work of timely import that’s evidently a call to arms (as the inaugural recipient of the Melbourne Fringe Climate Crisis Commission) and a warning of the human cost of ignorance on the matter. It’s a ferocious indictment on the slow-motion car crash that will most likely consume our planet.
I Hope This Means Something is playing at Chapel Off Chapel until October 13 and tickets are available here.
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