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Breaker Morant
- E4 Udderbelly, Edinburgh
- 19 August 2007
Courtroom drama goes for punches but doesn't always land them.
20 January 1902: bush poet, likeable boozer and renowned Australian horseman Harry 'Breaker' Morant and Lieutenants Handcock and Witton are court-martialed in Pietersburg, South Africa for the summary execution of Boer POWs and a German missionary. Guilt spills as easily as the blood of the tortured in the context of irregular commando warfare, but when British commander-in-chief Lord Kitchener is implicated in the messy inconvenience, some must be made more culpable than others.
Canadian if.comeddie award-winner Phil Nichol and Tom Daley direct a cast of Australian comics in sober roles in Kenneth G. Ross's celebrated stage play as part of Nichol's Comedians' Theatre Company. Adam Hills as the eponymous scapegoat and Brendon Burns as the co-accused Handcock provide rare moments of disenfranchised humour in a play which puts the patent hypocrisies of a deeply flawed military justice system on trial. Glaring lighting, spare set design and the uncompromising symbolism of a tattered Union Jack all make the impotence of the accused more unbearably transparent, but the whole thing doesn't quite hit home as much as it would like to in the unvaried performance of Hills and drummed-in pace.
Nevertheless, themes of dissipated blame and dubious morality resonate in the contemporary times of neocolonialist politics, and the ending note on the transcendence of poetry is as earnest a celebration of the festival as any.
Julien Hunt
