Fact assessment – Julian Assange play is tough going, with flashes of brilliance | Australian theatre

The playwright Patricia Cornelius and the director Susie Dee have been in a collaborative inventive partnership for many years, producing among the most searing and politically provocative works of theatre Australia has seen.

You may suppose a brand new play about Julian Assange and the vagaries of world geopolitics would encourage them to new heights. However, whereas there are flashes of brilliance all through, Fact fails as an act of agitprop and is tough going – and faintly dispiriting – as an act of drama.

We don’t get a single Assange right here however 5 of them (Emily Havea, Tomáš Kantor, James O’Connell, Eva Rees and Eva Seymour), organized as in a prison lineup. Whereas this might have inspired 5 totally different – perhaps contrasting and even contradictory? – viewpoints of the character, in observe they kind a united refrain of grievance. Grievance appears to be Cornelius’s central motivation, which she grinds like enamel.

We begin (virtually) in the beginning, when Assange was a nerdy child with a pc and a few eager hacking abilities. Melbourne might have housed him however Assange was a globalist from the beginning, connecting with fellow hackers on-line to infiltrate and “discover” extremely delicate laptop techniques all over the world, together with Citibank and (allegedly) the Pentagon. They didn’t disrupt or corrupt these techniques; they only “had a go searching”. But it surely gave Assange a style for subversion, the fulcrum of which was WikiLeaks.

We all know this story however Cornelius drags us by way of the primary occasions anyway, often elucidating particulars – the specifics of the sexual assault expenses in Sweden are illuminating – however hardly ever offering any nuance or ambiguity. The playwright has determined Assange is an exterminating angel of the left and goes to nice lengths to implement this studying; any information which may disrupt the narrative are jettisoned or smoothed over. It’s the dramatic equal of a raised fist, fastened and impermeable.

When Fact ventures away from Assange and into the case research of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, it loosens its grip somewhat on the propaganda and allows some mild. Rees is brilliantly susceptible as Manning, stripped and locked in a cell, and Kantor is compelling because the impervious younger man compelled into exile in (of all locations) Russia.

Better of all, and maybe a sign of the true potential of this materials, are two scenes completely unrelated to Assange however pulsing with thematic energy. One entails a youngster grappling with their mother and father’ silence over the sexual abuse of their son by the native priest. The opposite is a few girl cowered by the surveillance of her ex, who watches her each motion from the cameras inside her home. These moments crystallise the stakes and carry emotional weight, issues which are sorely missing within the Assange story.

Whereas a lot of Fact is a slog, dour and repetitive, many points of the manufacturing are sharp and articulate. Dee directs with nice poise and precision, modern in her use of house and attuned to shifts in temper and pacing. Matilda Woodroofe’s set could also be chilly and confronting, with shades of Guantánamo, nevertheless it’s able to variation and visible influence. Meri Blazevski’s video design is terrific, daring and intrusive as Massive Brother. And Paul Jackson’s lighting is arresting (though absolutely we’re carried out with blinding searchlights, certainly one of up to date theatre’s most drained cliches?)

The script might flatten the characters into declamatory ciphers however the actors carry color and depth to them anyway. O’Connor is the trend and Havea the suavity, Seymour the bewildered one and Kantor the thrilled iconoclast. Rees is fascinating to observe, alternately hounded and resolute, a dogged journalist in full Watergate mode. As an ensemble, they crackle and surge.

Fact fancies itself a grenade lodged on the coronary heart of the viewers, an try to reclaim Assange as an unambiguous image of resistance. However the man and his legacy are far murkier. One might argue his dumping of secrets and techniques and subsequent indifference of the influence on individuals has been much more useful to the appropriate than the left – one thing Cornelius refuses to countenance.

Agitprop needs to be an act of persuasion, however this unashamedly old style protest piece appears unlikely to shift opinion one iota. The reality continues to slide by way of our feeble grasp.