Two Cents: A Lie of the Mind (Light The Torch)
#1
Isn’t it funny how some of the most striking images that inflame the mind’s eye after a show has ended are those which you never actually saw. When I will later recall Light The Torch’s production of Sam Shephard’s ‘85 play, I suspect that I won’t – not at first, anyway – see, for instance, the light patter of snow falling in the sickeningly dark mirror-rift between two homesteads, one in California, the other in Wisconsin. Nor Beth (Lily MacNevin), that pale, frail doomed creature of partner abuse, swaying and unsteady, uttering lucid truths through her halting brain-broken speech. Not Frankie, bloody and bullet-holed on the Millers’ sofa, nor Baylor’s bad back and damn socks, nor Michelle at her fool-husband’s feet. Not even Jake crawling on all fours like a dog, muzzled and leashed with his father’s burial flag, Beth’s sister Meg (Abaigh Curry) walking him with sadistically vengeful triumph towards a reckoning that just doesn’t come.
No, I think it will be the memory evoked by Jake’s sister Sally (Felicity Cribb) for their mother, Lorraine (Indiana Jamie as a misogynist arch-bitch). Summoned by the raw power of Shephard’s dialogue, I’ll see father and son bitterly reunited in a Mexican town, racing each other to the border – a patricidal challenge fuelled by alcohol and pride that a man would rather die than not heed. I see even now, vivid as anything, the duty-fled elder toppling face-first to the hard gravel, the animal look of ancient hate he gives his daughter when she offers her hand. So much mutually assured destruction is in our gendered rules of existing, Shepard seems to be saying. All these baits and traps and stupid, savage dances, rubbed raw and bloody by the rote turning of the wheel.
#2
Our performers have the kind of singing voices that make you go home, inspired, burst into song as soon as you step over the threshold, and then remember that kid, you cannot sing. I’d be insufferable if I could carry half a tune – I’d gussy the air with beatific trills and runs and belting arias at every opportunity. As it is, I am a mostly mute hermit. I’ve nonetheless droned along to ‘Father’s Son’ by Stephen Wilson Jr and ‘Don’t Think Twice’ by Bob Dylan at least three times since the viewing – each given slappin’ southern, acoustic guitar-backed harmonies in this production, along with perhaps five other songs.
What was the last track though, our awkward coda? Who knows. The production would be better to cut it. Was it included just to demonstrate to any talent scouts in the crowd that our affectedly wobbly-speeched Beth could sing?
#3
The cast had better singing voices than accents. Whatever their American accents were trying to be, there sure was some slip-sliding snafus into a bastard Irish, and perhaps even Eastern European? One wonders whether the training was worth the effort. I’d accept Australian accents.
#4
If I’m understanding the program correctly, all actors were graduating students of Actor’s Studio Australia in 2025. Quite impressive if true: they all did themselves proud. Let’s see where they pop up next.
A Lie of the Mind by Sam Shephard
Light The Torch
New Theatre, Newtown
Until 24 January 2026
