The hallmark of a good play is one that makes the audience think and with The River, I found myself thinking about this production more and for longer than I usually would after the conclusion of the show. This play is the latest in Sydney Theatre Company’s season, with up and coming director Margaret Thanos taking the reins at the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House to tackle British playwright Jez Butterworth’s 80 minute work.

The play focuses on the life of the Man (played by Ewan Leslie) who loves fishing and is out in an outback cabin where he brings two women (Miranda Otto and Andrea Demetriades) to whom he tells basically the same stories and provides the same experiences. It is not quite clear what the man’s intentions are but he takes both women out to the lake to fish despite one woman’s later protestations about fishing and eventually begins to tell them stories about his life and invites them to share their stories as well, although they ultimately lead to the same outcome.

This is a cleverly constructed work, with the unease heightened by the interplay between the narratives, with one woman entering as the other woman leaves throughout the show. It feels like a continuation of the same story, adding to the sense of disorientation and eeriness. Further, the audience is given little context, with Sam Cheng’s eerie composition, Anna Tregloan’s unsettling design and Damian Cooper’s lighting doing much of the work in shaping the atmosphere.

The play is thankfully tight which means that the audience really is engrossed for the whole show, as the mystery begins to unravel before more layers get brought up again, with a photo with a woman’s face scratched out being one of the seminal points of the show, especially in its second half. Yet, in spite of all this, it felt like there was just something missing, that little final piece of the puzzle that was not so much in the lack of resolution in the play but rather in something that just did not quite come through.

It was not the acting, which was fantastic throughout from all three as they played into the eeriness and the demands of their characters exceptionally. Thus, it really only became clear what the disconnect was in the Q &A following the show, as this review was written on the “Night with the Artists”. In this, Leslie talked about his interpretation of the play, strongly suggesting that he interpreted the Man as perhaps struggling with relationships and using the order and rhythm of his eccentricities to bring some sort of control to what was an otherwise awkward experience for the Man. But Thanos’s directorial vision seemed quite a bit more sinister than this, with the eerie music and set making the Man feel a lot more predatory. In some ways, this is what made the play so thought provoking and interesting, as there really were these two interpretations that both felt equally valid and especially relevant in modern day times but on the stage they did clash a little bit, revealing this to be both the production’s biggest strength and its biggest flaw. 

Also interesting were Thanos’s comments that what the audience saw was not so much a bang, but more a withering that followed the cycle of a relationship, especially in the case where a memory of such a relationship often becomes more fallible with time. While this was an interesting insight that many in the audience would have connected with, it begged the question of whether the play was actually more of a reflection of the Man, again opening up more questions than providing answers. 

Overall, this is a very thought-provoking play with conversations to inevitably follow which long exceed its 80 minute runtime. The acting was exceptional, with Otto returning to the Sydney Theatre Company stage with an exceptional performance and Leslie and Demetriades also performing very well. But ultimately, the play did feel a little bit confused in its concept, with the two conflicting interpretations of what was happening on stage, meaning that it was often quite a confusing watch, even if it is this ambiguity where the play gets its spark. This is certainly a play that challenges the audience and throws up more questions than it does answers but in the modern day, when there is so much focus on relationships and what relationships mean, this is definitely a play that will appeal to people across a wide range of demographics and is certainly worth a watch. 

Rating: ★★★★

The River plays at the Sydney Opera House until 16 May. For more information, click here. 

All photo credits: Daniel Boud