Thomas Weatherall in Blue. Photo: Joseph Mayers
Engrossing from start to finish, writer/performer Thomas Weatherall’s Blue, a 100-minute monologue delving into loss and love and everything in between, is a beautiful piece of writing and a triumphant playwrighting debut.
Weatherall is Mark, one of a pair of ‘Irish twins”, whose early childhood alongside his beloved 10½-month older brother John, is full of happy memories: playing in the garden; cooking smells, always enticing, emanating from the family kitchen; going to the beach. His mother, an unpublished but enthusiastic writer, influences Mark on a his own writing path. With adolescence, things become darker. Depression hovers. His mother worries about him. He worries about life; his older brother sets him right. He resets.
And then, tragedy crashes in. Mark brings us, his willing audience, into his grief. And shows us how he deals with it. And how things change. And what happens next. And it’s personal, and universal, and it’s life – in all its joy and grief, happiness and sadness.
It’s not the last time Mark will be tested.
Weatherall’s performance, as a young man alone in his apartment, explaining his story and trying to make sense of his life, is totally absorbing. How does one navigate grief and depression, and hold out hope for the future? His thoughts on falling in love – the ‘four stages’ of love, as he describes them – are both funny and insightful. Weatherall’s Mark is vulnerable and engaging.
To say much more will reveal too much. Weatherall’s own summation is this: ‘I began writing Blue as a sort of unprescribed therapy. It was a way for me to explore parts of myself, and experiences I was having, all within the safety-net of fiction. It’s a delicate and, at times brutal, monologue that leans into some of the heavier experiences in life, while attempting to maintain a degree of levity and hope. In both writing and taking on the character of Mark, I had to navigate this person’s life, and question both where and how he finds the beauty and meaning in some of his darker moments. This in turn has helped me do the same in my own life, and I hope it can help audiences do the same.’
Our lives are at once minuscule – in the great scheme of things – and massive, to those who know and love us.
Weatherall’s words are indeed delicate, and sometime shockingly brutal, but they work to make us think and understand. Mark’s story could be our own, or that of someone we love. As director Deborah Brown says, there is ‘an intimacy and sensuality with Thomas’s Blue.’ A resilience, too.
The set, courtesy of designers Jacob Nash and Cris Baldwin, is wonderfully complimentary; a wash of ocean in various shades of blue; the roll of waves, at once calming and incessant; a sea that can bring peace and danger.
Blue is part of Sydney Festival’s First Nations focused Blak Out program.Its season is short, only until 29 January, so catch it while you can.
Tickets: $37 – $93
https://belvoir.com.au/productions/blue/
