A light-hearted tale contrastingly set in a truly troubled land, with an absurd premise of ambitious creativity that the audience must embrace to truly experience the beauty of the story.
Presented by: Remote Theater Project
Reviewed: 5 March, 2023
Palestinian resident Yusuf is working on building a rocket that will make it to the moon, to the utter dismay of family and friends who are determined to deter him from these outlandish plans.
The audience is first introduced to an older Palestinian man, Yusuf, as he exercises outside his house in a village in the occupied West Bank. His supportive daughter Layla voices her support of him moving on and finding a new romance after the death three years ago of his wife and her mother. To Layla, a new romance explains her father’s recent secretive behaviour and spontaneous decision to exercise, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
As Yusuf receives mysterious packages and deliveries to his house, suspicions grow, with word beginning to spread that he is collaborating with the occupation. As those around Yusuf begin to discover the actual truth about the project in his shed, their reactions are not in favour of his plan, aside from a young engineering student who is determined to do something more with his life than stock a fruit stand.
Yusuf goes about his mysterious behaviours with pure intentions of reuniting those on a land layered heavily by conflict and a troubled history. His goal to celebrate Palestinian creativity and ingenuity is honourable, but it does still feel like there is another reason lingering behind such an ambitious plan…
Alongside the drama are many light-hearted moments of comedy thanks to interactions between the characters, mainly concerning Yusuf’s blunt and direct nature. You do also have to accept and embrace the continuous humorous absurdity of the idea that one man in occupied Palestine could build a rocket in his back shed and take it to the moon.
The set is cleverly simple, with a floor-to-ceiling screen of partially translucent, joined plastic strips dividing the stage in two. When the play moves to the inside of Yusuf’s shed, a generous section of the screen ascends to the ceiling, drawing the audience into the space behind. This space is filled with a workbench covered in diagrams and blueprints, a projector, a random assortment of tools, and above this are layers upon layers of more sketched blueprints and rough diagrams.
There are some points where the actors fumble their lines, breaking the audience out of reality for moments which is unfortunate, but hopefully this is just a characteristic of the first performance.
Grey Rock is a light-hearted tale of ambition and hope to reunite a land with a controversial history and present, where not only accepting, but embracing a truly absurd premise is key to experiencing the beauty of this tale.
Reviewed by Georgina Smerd
Photo credit: Roy VanDerVegt
Venue: Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
Season: 9 – 12 March, 2023
Duration: 1 hour 40 mins
Tickets: $30 – $69
Bookings: https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/grey-rock/
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