"As Nikki, solo performer Chrissie Shaw offers an utterly delightful, spirited and engaging performance."

The year is 1953 and young Nikki is celebrating her tenth birthday on a remote island off the Australian coast. It is a time lost in the past, remembered only by those who lived their lives on a farm alongside a lighthouse on the sea. It is a time when lighthouses were manned by the lighthouse keeper, who would keep watch over the waters to guide the crafts that sailed the seas to safety. It was a time when every seven and a half seconds, the bright shaft of light would swing across the dark and dangerous sea, as the winds howled upon the shore and mutton birds sheltered from the gusty, turbulent sky.

Greg Lissaman’s Flotsam and Jetsam is a gentle, captivating tale of life on a rocky outcrop for the families of the lighthouse keeper. It is a life lost in the annals of time, a forgotten world, now superseded by technology that has replaced the hardy efforts of human endeavour. Flotsam and Jetsam is a delightful tale of the power of a child’s imagination and her exciting world of free-spirited adventure.

As Nikki, solo performer Chrissie Shaw offers an utterly delightful, spirited and engaging performance. Her sister Sally and her father interject as voiceovers and voices of the past echo across the stage through Kimmo Vennonen’s ingeniously compiled sound design.

At times, Shaw deftly dons Imogen Keen’s superbly created Victorian body puppet costume to become the original lighthouse keeper’s wife, the rather austere and fearful Mrs. Ingram. Every aspect of design has been meticulously and exquisitely conceived. Hilary Talbot’s design of the lighthouse landscape is a three dimensional picture book page, with delicately drawn farmhouses, rocky outcrops and a model lighthouse perched high upon a cliff. Crayon-coloured in soft green and yellow, it creates a picturesque scene of cheerful tranquillity, transformed occasionally by Owen Horton’s night-time lighting design against a starry backdrop. The designers and director, Catherine Roach, have created a wonderland of picture book illustration as a backdrop to Shaw’s lively account of Nikki’s life at the lighthouse.

Expressive in her animation, masterful in her story-telling and enchanting in her song, composed by her especially for this show, Shaw recreates a life of fun and laughter that had her young audience rapt in her accounts of gathering flotsam and jetsam to create a museum, of Harry the dog taunting the tiger snake, her father’s ghost story about the dead body in the bathtub and of the schooling at the kitchen table and a wild and windy Christmas that prevented Santa from making the crossing to the island. Every tale is unravelled with superb timing and child-like wonderment.

Occasionally children would be invited to participate by guessing what lay inside a mysterious box, washed ashore from a ship or taking on the character of jetsam such as a teapot or seaweed, or creating a jellyfish. Neither token, not gratuitous, the participation heightened the magic of the performance as children and adults alike were drawn into the unique experience of a lighthouse keeper’s daughter.

Lissaman’s script demonstrates an excellent awareness of the child’s world. It is skilfully structured with moments of participation, some delightful songs and a variety of carefully introduced adventures to hold the young audience’s attention, engage their interest and involvement and teach them about a world that is no more, implying the enjoyment of creating one’s own entertainment.

In the intimate environment of The Street Theatre’s cosy Street 2, this delicious, expertly staged production reminded me that theatre plays a vital role in engaging young audiences in a world gone by that still holds the wonders to hold on today – a love of life, a delight in the sheer joy of imaginative play and a pleasure in the discovery of the past.

Sponsored by the Cape Otway Lightstation, with research funding from the Pamela Denoon Trust, Flotsam and Jetsam, supported by The Street Theatre and staged by Chrissie Shaw’s Smallshows, proved yet again that sincerity, integrity and theatrical artistry are the true hallmarks of excellent theatre.

Flotsam and Jetsam in its own charming, simple and captivating way shines a beacon of bright light across its story-book world of delight.

The End.

Credits