Art Smitten: Reviews - 2017

Sandra Thibodeaux’s The Age of Bones is an ambitious, playfully political Indonesian-Australian coproduction now being hosted by La Mama in Carlton.  For a play that extols (and some might say preaches) the virtues of working together across national and natural borders, it’s very pleasing to see how the production itself has exemplified this cultural harmony at every stage of its development. It also comes to Melbourne as part of the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts festival, which, for some of the younger audiences of La Mama, might be delivering them their first taste of surtitled theatre, except for maybe opera. This will certainly be a very gentle introduction for them. About half of Thibodeaux’s dialogue is performed in Indonesian, while the other half is performed, unsurprisingly, in English. It also makes magnificent use of puppetry and projections as a backdrop to this story of a 15-year-old boy, Ikan (Imam Setia Hagi) who is lost at sea. Lost because that is the last