From its opening moment, The River gave me the sense that something fishy was about to happen.
Set in a riverside English cabin, we are introduced to what appears to be a very honest relationship between The Man (Ewen Leslie) and The Woman (Miranda Otto), complete with flirtatious banter, bickering, and the confession that she would rather curl up and read her book than go fishing on a moonless night. It feels real and raw. But things start to descend into murky waters when The Woman leaves the room to fetch something, and an ambiguous timeline of events unfolds.
What is apparent though, is that The Man has experienced this all before, time and time again: The same cozy weekend away, the same river, the same carefully constructed romance. Over the course of the play, The Woman and The Other Woman (Andrea Demetriades) take turns inhabiting this romantic escape with The Man, who convinces them both that she is the only woman he’s ever brought there.
The script is clever and poetic, rich with visceral imagery. But it was the interplay of relationships and the actors themselves that really sold it for me. I couldn’t care less about fishing, although Leslie’s monologue about catching his first fish was expertly performed. Indeed, Leslie demonstrates impressive deftness throughout, leading with his heart on his sleeve while masking a darker vulnerability. He is exactly the kind of man you’d believe is falling in love, selling you a charm-laced narrative in which you are the one.
Otto’s presence is quietly captivating. She grounds The Woman with a sense of emotional sincerity and introspection, bringing a softness that makes her gradual unease all the more affecting. Demetriades infuses The Other Woman with a fiery energy. Her confrontation with The Man is chilling, reeling us in with a compelling and descriptive experience of their earlier sexual encounter, earning audible gasps as the implications of what she has discovered come into focus.
Director Margaret Thanos elegantly grapples with the ambiguity of Jez Butterworth’s script, crafting a world that feels familiar and sincere, yet increasingly disturbing and elusive.
That world is stunningly realised by Anna Tregloan’s design. Strips of material hang from above, evoking a mysterious riverside forest (or perhaps the river itself), forming the perfect backdrop for a play that sits on the cusp of reality and surrealism. Upon a reflective floor sits the wooden frame of a cabin; an incomplete structure potentially alluding to the holes in The Man’s persona. The sound design by Sam Cheng deepens the play’s eerie atmosphere, with harmonic fragments of song, subtle ambient textures and thunder that jolts us in our seats. Damien Cooper’s lighting effectively juxtaposes the warm intimacy of the cabin interior with the cold uncertainty of the river and surrounding woods.
When The Man tells The Woman he loves her, she replies that she doesn’t think she knows what love is. This is the moment the penny dropped for me. As Mitchell Butel writes, Butterworth offers no easy answers because love itself is an eternal mystery. How do you know when you are in love? What defines it? The River suggests that love can drive you to compromise yourself, for better or worse. It makes you do things you hate (like fishing), convinces you to believe what you want rather than what is, scares you, challenges you, and consumes you. For The Man, love compels him to construct the perfect narrative, to present a clean slate to each lover – perhaps out of fear of being truly seen. He is pathologically deceitful in the name of love.
The audience audibly groaned at The Man’s repeated lies and familiar relationship patterns. While I found myself disliking him, his behavior acknowledges the difficult truth that it is possible to experience what feels like the purest form of love with one person, and then feel it again with someone else. That it is valid to love, and to love again. This however, doesn’t excuse his dishonesty – this man clearly needs therapy.
Some may find the play’s lack of resolution frustrating, and while I too would like to uncover the truth behind the woman in the red dress, I feel the mystery makes the story more gripping. Ultimately, Thanos’ directorial debut with Sydney Theatre Company is well worth the watch. It’s a haunting, intellectually engaging production that leaves you reaching for answers long after the final moment.
