Stephanie Somerville, Megan Wilding and Alex Malone. Photos: Clare Hawley
The publicity photos for A Little Piece of Ash show the actors with cigarettes in various orifices but this is not a play about smoking, it’s about grieving and loss, and moving on. It’s about life.
Jedda’s mum has just died. It wasn’t entirely unexpected because Lily had been ill for some time, but death is always a shock. So very final, after all. Jedda doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Denial: first stage of grieving. What to do about it?
In A Little Piece of Ash, Lily (played by Megan Wilding, who also wrote and directs the work) is on stage as a spiritual presence, unseen and unheard by her daughter (Stephanie Somerville). Lily’s asides about Jedda’s behaviour, past and present, are wry, amusing, and – given that she is an Aboriginal woman – occasionally enlightening when it comes to custom and language. Jedda’s friends attempt to rally her, with booze, advice, companionship, all of which are largely rejected (and commented upon by Lily, which lifts the mood considerably) and we move on to the funeral, the smoking ceremony, the aftermath of loss.
Interspersed with this journey are flashbacks to Jedda’s younger self, often played by Alex Malone (who also takes the role of Jedda’s grieving friend Ned) but also by other members of the ensemble (Toby Blome, Luke Fewster and Moreblessing Maturure). These are at first intriguing, then slightly baffling and then distracting, perhaps because I found the cast changes irritating and would have preferred to see the two roles enacted by the same two actors each time. Perhaps because there were just too many of them.
How each of us deals with grief and loss is of course highly individualistic and yet scarily similar in some aspects. Along her own particular path to acceptance Jedda goes along some of the usual routes, and one of the play’s hilarious highlights is a quasi-seduction scene between her and a very ackward Eddie (Blome), which even alarms the usually unshockable Lily.
Wilding, who is on stage the whole time as Lily, never misses a beat as the warm, caring mother who is both worried for and insightful of her “bub”, her grown-up and now bereaved daughter.
It all ends in tears of course. And not just Jedda’s, who is played with a wonderful range of emotions by Somerville. There were quite a few wet cheeks in the audience too as Jedda finally acknowledges that she has lost her mother’s physical presence but that the dead are never gone entirely. Especially if they are in the Dreaming.
Shortlisted for the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award in 2017, this is Wilding’s first full length work and the writing is raw and beautiful. It builds beautifully to its poignant and heart-wrenching climax. Catch its world premiere at the KXT, Kings Cross until 26 April. Don’t miss out!
