Some plays have as their central action an epoch changing battle, or perhaps the execution of an unjustly accused heroine, or even a torrid, illicit love affair. For one dreadful moment, I thought this play was going to be about the filling in of a form.
Kaveh is an Afghani-Australian. He is gay, but his family back in Afghanistan are arranging a marriage for him with a woman. His flatmate in Sydney, Amaliah, is Pakistani and she’s keen for Australian citizenship.
You can probably guess the rest.
Antony Makhlouf and Almitra Mavalvala are entrancing as Kaveh and Amaliah.
Written by Mavalvala, the play has elements of rom-com – though not a lot of the “rom”, nor an unwavering dedication to the “com”.
It shares with romantic comedy a lightness of touch and a focus on a single central relationship. Mavalvala allows the friends to remain platonic. And, though she toys with comic set-ups (Joseph Raboy does an amusing turn as multiple characters), she chooses never to flesh out these set-ups fully, and with an easy-to-watch, languid style of direction, the production rests in a type of realism-lite.
Though we do see the friends fill in a form, it’s fundamentally a play about homelands.
Director Kersherka Sivakumaran began the opening night performance with a lengthy and heartfelt acknowledgement of country. (I’ve been criticised previously for mentioning these acknowledgements, as though we should be embarrassed about them, as though they were some sort of personal ablution – necessary but best kept private.) This particular acknowledgement used the phrase “stolen land” and it reminded me, as I watched a play about who is granted the right to remain in this country, that all relationships we have with the land are also relationships between human beings. The manner in which our connection with any land is exercised is necessarily predicated on the acknowledgement of this connection by other individuals. Drama can attempt to portray our relationship with land, but as an artform it will inevitably emphasise relationships between specific people. This is not a fatal inadequacy of the artform. Whether Amaliah can stay in Australia is dependent upon individuals from the immigration department, and on Kaveh.
And previous homelands? The relationships the characters have with Afghanistan and Pakistan? These are represented by phone calls and letters from loved ones faraway. All are presented as voice overs, and this poignantly catches a sense of distance, of absence.
The older generations banished from the stage, we’re left with an image of children alone and lost in a strange land, and in that there’s a terrible pathos, a plea for openheartedness that must be acknowledged.
Paul Gilchrist
For The Love of Paper by Almitra Mavalvala
at KXT Broadway until 20 April
Image by LSH Media
Theatre Red 