IT’S the funny thing about famous last words: they are rarely, if ever, the last.
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“Such is life,” Ned Kelly is said to have declared when he swung in 1880, but it was hardly the end of the story. The myth and mystery of the bushranger and his gang has raged on in the Australian consciousness ever since.
It’s inspired countless retellings and re-imaginings in film and theatre but every so often one stands out, and such is the case with Queensland Theatre Company’s Kelly, a clever production that challenges fact and fiction with a tantalising tale of “what if”.
Writer Matthew Ryan is something of a favourite on the Border, with his previous works boy, girl, wall and Packed both performed at HotHouse Theatre is recent years. Audiences will recognise Ryan in his writing — the dry humour, the quick pace, the small cast — but there the similarities end.
Our action unfolds on a raised steel platform with a wooden bench for a bed and a ratty blanket for warmth — this is Ned’s jail cell, it’s the night before his execution and yes, he’s vaguely tossing up what those last words of his should be.
A priest comes to see him who in fact turns out to be Ned’s brother, Dan Kelly, believed to have perished in the Glenrowan siege. Dan wants his brother’s blessing to leave Victoria and start a new life in Queensland — an oft-repeated telling of the Kelly mythos.
What follows is a riveting hour and half, sometimes humourous, more often tense, as the brothers have it out.
Steven Rooke’s Ned is wry, a larrikin with a quick wit; he is seemingly at peace with his fate and determined to “die like a Kelly”. Kevin Spink’s Dan is desperate to escape his past, bitter toward his big brother but unable to move out of his shadow.
Rooke and Spink create an incredible tension, at times bordering on uncomfortable for the audience, like we’re spying through the cracks — or jail bars — on family secrets.
Their argument is the same that has gone on since Ned first surfaced: was he a good man? Was he the “national hero” Rooke desperately declares his Ned to be, or the villain?
What’s different this time round, however, is that it’s Ned’s own brother challenging him, demanding justifications.
Does the argument change when it’s someone who’s supposed to be on his own side?
But this story belongs just as much to Dan, and in fact the same question can be asked of him: was he good? Does he deserve the sympathy he desperately craves, right down to the final haunting cries as the lights go down, or is he simply weak?
What is essentially a two-man show is occasionally interrupted by the jail guard Anthony Standish, who director Todd MacDonald has used just enough to propel the story and add weight where needed.
In all it’s a tight, polished production where the sparse sound and lighting almost become characters in their own rights.
Kelly is at the Butter Factory Theatre until tomorrow.
