Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney festival
Adapted from essays by the likes of Stan Grant, Troy Cassar-Daley and NRL player Joe Williams, Dear Son generously invites the audience into its warm and vulnerable camaraderie
Five Indigenous men gather at a coastal beach shack, busily carrying beams and corrugated iron across the sand. They yarn while barbecuing in a 44-gallon drum. “Don’t worry, fellas,” says actor Jimi Bani, cheerily assuring them none of the meat is made of culturally sacred animals, “I’ve got all your totem dietary requirements.”
Such culturally specific yet delightfully accessible humour regularly lightens the wide-ranging, mostly weighty load of Dear Son, the theatrical adaptation of Thomas Mayo’s 2021 collection of essays about fatherhood by 13 prominent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men. This production has opened in Sydney at Belvoir Street theatre after its premiere last year in Brisbane and a season in Adelaide.