A Rock in the Limbus Review

A Rock in the Limbus - 7 out of 10
PitchWhite Productions
TICKETS: End of Season

Ambitious, enigmatic, and often baffling, A Rock in the Limbus is the latest original work from Adelaide playwright Lochie Daniel. This production – Daniel’s third – demonstrates a maturing of his voice, even as it leaves the audience scratching their heads. The post-show Q&A felt less like a courtesy and more a necessity for an audience struggling to reconcile the surreal events on stage with their own reality.

The set in Act 1 is remarkable for its simplicity. The titular rock stands proudly centre stage and is flanked on each side by a pair of projection flats. These flats are used to set the scene. The opening of the production is a projection journey through the history of the universe, Earth and humanity up to now and into a hypothetical future before we snap to a collage of overlapping news footage, hinting at some of the many underlying themes of the play before finally settling in the outback, a few kilometres outside of Alice Springs where The Rock is found by Hazel and Oli. Tucked into the scene is a standout piece of stagecraft: a mostly obscured old car, rendered so realistically that you’d be forgiven for thinking the production team had driven a genuine vehicle onto the stage for its brief appearance. Act 2 has a lot more clutter on stage with a vast array of electronic paraphernalia to stand in as the scientific testing equipment. Unfortunately, because it must remain on stage for the duration of Act 2 it sometimes becomes a distraction as some stories are told in other locations like a hotel room, the Adelaide Parklands and a hospital waiting room.

The technical aspects are well handled after some unexpected teething issues brought opening night to an early end. The projections are smooth with the news footage transitions being particularly well mapped to the projection screens. The lighting was adequate though at times a little heavy-handed when showing the effect of The Rock. The underscoring of the production was composed by Will Everett and had a suitably science fiction mixed with suspense thriller vibe. It was at its most effective during the opening projections.

This production demands a lot of its three-person cast and each one of them must be commended for creating more than 60 different characters between them. Gracie Greenrod’s two main roles of geologist Heidi and video game developer Julia are two characters who are significantly older than Greenrod herself. She does well to bridge this age gap, conveying the weight of their life experiences—both as mothers and as women at the peaks of their respective professional careers. As Heidi, Greenrod conveys the deep loss she has experienced through the loss of several family members to cancer, the pandemic or other unfortunate circumstances while wrestling with her faith in God. While as Julia, Greenrod successfully plays out a woman with deep-seated self-esteem issues that are impacting her sex life and relationship with her husband.

Holly Hastings has an easier time portraying Hazel and Nova both with a stage age much closer to her own, but still two unique characters. Hazel is a young adult who perpetually feels the need to perform friendship with her university and work colleagues while relishing the opportunity to truly be herself and just exist when with her best friend Oli. While Nova, a young research assistant on assignment with Greenrod’s Heidi, is escaping from the disastrous end of a relationship.

Isiah Macaspac portrays Oli (Hazel’s best friend), Eric (Julia’s husband and co-video game developer) and Lucas the billionaire funding the research being carried out by Heidi and Nova; three more different characters you could not imagine. As Oli, Macaspac captures his awkward, always unsure of himself nature, while Macaspac clearly relishes the cocksure entitlement of the billionaire Lucas, introduced in the play's final minutes.

The sheer scale of the character-swapping mentioned earlier is most evident during the Act 1 BBQ scene, where they conjure a rotating cast of over 20 characters through a kaleidoscope of accents and a single costume piece. Greenrod, Hastings, and Macaspac dial the energy to 11, creating a frantic microcosm of human society. The most seamless transitions utilised the six-foot monolith as a physical 'wipe,' with actors disappearing behind the stone and re-emerging instantly as someone new. Conversely, the character swaps performed in plain sight were less effective, forcing the audience to play a brief game of catch-up with the narrative.

Ultimately, the production's success hinges on the writing, which feels like two disparate plays joined at the hip. Act 1 is a zany, satirical exploration of how humanity clings to control when faced with the unknown, using stories new and old to attach meaning. Summed up best at the end of Act 1 as the United Nations (as a stand in for secular science), a religious leader and an American hick vie for control of The Rock before regressing to a highly stylised and exaggerated immaturity. However, Act 2 takes a jarring turn into a serious drama with supernatural undertones as The Rock “forces” some of our protagonists into drastically out of character actions. These narratives leap, combined with several lengthy monologues in the second half, causing the pace to stumble just as the tension should be peaking.

A Rock in the Limbus is a play that wants to ask a lot of questions of the audience; not all of them are related to each other and some are barely half-formed. Daniel describes the play as an exploration of whether our 'Rift Valley' biology is equipped for the hyper-connected modern world. It is a fascinating, intellectually dense premise that occasionally buckles under its own weight. With a sharper dramaturgical eye and a more focused script, A Rock in the Limbus could be a powerhouse. For now, it remains a complicated, slightly unbalanced piece of theatre – one that is more interested in the pursuit of questions than the comfort of answers, though it hasn't quite found the structural balance to hold them all yet.

- Scott