Still from THE WEEKEND. A woman looks poised to run. In the background the outline of a red door shape glows in the darkness.Lara has only the week­end to track down her part­ner as she tra­verses the world of pub­lic hous­ing, drug deal­ing, and addic­tion.

The Week­end is based on a situ­ation that first time play­wright that Hen­ri­etta Baird (from Kuku Yalanji/Yidinji coun­try in Queensland’s Far North) exper­i­enced. From this she’s writ­ten an extremely funny, emo­tion­ally hor­ri­fy­ing one-woman show. Per­former Shakira Clan­ton plays mul­tiple char­ac­ters as we fol­low Lara on her epic jour­ney.

She per­forms on a stark set (by Kev­in O’Brien). There is a large rect­angle of grey indus­tri­al car­pet that looks like cre­ate sparks if Clan­ton wore shoes. A three pan­el screen of fun­house mir­rors dis­torts her reflec­tion when she dances or walks in front of it. Around the edges of the pan­el are led lights which change col­our to bril­liantly rep­res­ent dif­fer­ent set­tings. (Light­ing design Kar­en Nor­ris.) A plastic bread tray sits at one side.

The play starts with Clan­ton dan­cing. Her move­ments are sure and strong. I see aspects of gath­er­ing, dir­ec­tion. Energy is cre­ated then sent through clap­ping. The theatre stills. The sound­scape is rhythmic with a tap­ping sound bal­anced by a hol­low drum beat. (Sound design by Nick Wales, Rhy­an Clapham (aka Dobby), Kev­in O’Brien.) The lights fade to black and then we’re in to the story.  

I’m con­fused at first. Clan­ton as Lara is charm­ing. She bal­ances the out­wardly-calm per­sona with the rising ten­sion on the inside. Her real­isa­tion of the Lara’s two boys is spars­er than I’d expec­ted. A head tilt, a slight change of voice. Her char­ac­ter­isa­tion of the oth­er women is much stronger. Phys­ic­ally and vocally they are quite dif­fer­ent to Lara. Later in the play I get it. The men aren’t at the centre of this story. The men leave, or are left. It is the women are act­ive in this world.  They are informed by their past and the rela­tion­ship they have with these men but the sis­ter­hood (good and bad) is who takes action. These are women who have been trau­mat­ised but who have locked that trauma away in order to func­tion. It leaks out in self-destruct­ive beha­viours, but they are cop­ing the best way they know how. There is a ter­rible sense that they believe this is what they deserve. Dir­ect­or Liza-Mare Syron has skil­fully paced the evol­u­tion of the char­ac­ters with the rev­el­a­tion in the script. 

A myth­ic tale of search­ing and self dis­cov­ery. Recog­nis­ably First People’s work, it’s heart­break­ing and redempt­ive. 

Con­tent warn­ing: descrip­tions of intra­ven­ous drug use, strong lan­guage.