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Belvoir Street Downstairs
until 1 June 2008
Bookings: (02) 9699 3444
I attended the opening night of My Name is Rachel Corrie. I was deeply affected by the performance, as were others.
No, I wasn’t working the room with Kleenex, no need, as it was only too evident from the post show conversations that people needed to talk about what they had seen rather than what they were up to in their lives, and it warmed the cockles of this cynic’s heart.
So who was Rachel Corrie and why has this piece, based on her writings, which mainly consist of her emails and frantic scribbling in notebooks, polarised critics and audiences wherever it has been performed?
I should note that in some cities renowned for their culture and creativity, such as New York, productions of this play have actually been cancelled. You can Google this stuff if you are interested but also know that despite the hopes of an astute Sydney theatre blogger, on opening night, a particularly chilly autumn evening, there was no picket line to cross.
A ridiculing cartoon may have appeared in the local Jewish press but there was not a single, thermos-wielding protester in sight.
So again I come back to what I think is important, which is who was Rachel and why does it seem so very sad that she died at 23?
Maybe because despite the myth of who she was, a white, middle class American female who journeyed to the Middle East, a dissenter who was crushed by a bulldozer, she has emerged through this play as a woman, who despite all the recklessness and lack of worldliness of youth, was a passionate voice seeking the truth and knowing that it could not be contained in a single ideology.
It is also clear that Corrie, if she had lived, might have become a writer and an artist, and it charms you that she was all too aware of her own shortcomings and the particular insignificance of her life.
Political theatre does not need to be all things to all people and that is exquisitely presented in My Name is Rachel Corrie.
Belinda Bromilow, who I recall from her show stealing turn in Boy Gets Girl at the STC a few years ago, gives an outstanding performance as Rachel, always clear and present and I was highly impressed with Shannon Murphy’s directing.
I don’t give star ratings but let me simply suggest that this is something you really should see.
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