Perth Voice Interactive

I  WAS lost in a circus tent this week as the electrifying King Hit took me to places well outside my comfort zone.

Laughter and tears tripped over each other during the performance, leaving audiences breathless.

Many clearly wanted to talk about what just happened, and strangers turned to neighbours: “That’s a story that has to be told,” said the man, rapt, next to me.

Written by WA playwright David Milroy and Noongar mate Geoffrey Narkle in 1997 the play follows the late Gary Narkle’s life from a loving family living in an Aboriginal camp, “fenced in by a rubbish tip”, to his forced removal to Wandering mission, 70km away.

Like all indigenous people in the 1950s and 1960s they are at the mercy of the white bureaucrats in Native Welfare who control their lives.

Unusually for the times, Narkle’s dad Largy (Maitland Schnaars) applies successfully for citizenship, giving the family some protection, but it wasn’t not enough.

The children were removed while the parents attended a family funeral in the city, having left the kids in the care of an older, married sibling.

Narkle’s father died two weeks later, and he didn’t see his mother again for many years, by which time he was bitter and angry and fighting the demons of his past.

Fighting is a metaphor for the play, told through Narkle’s time as a boxer with the Stewart Boxing Troupe, travelling the state and putting on bouts at local agricultural shows.

Clarence Ryan is magnificent as Geoffrey Narkle (whose stage name is The Barker Bulldog), playing him from the age of four to adulthood.

He perfectly portrays the innocence of a child at play and is great as a naive teenager discovering love, but his fury and anger as years of pent up rage erupts is absolutely chilling.

Through it all he retains an essential sweetness, making him believable as the pastor, father and community leader that Narkle went on to become, before his untimely death aged 54.

Karla Hart plays all the women in Narkle’s life and the audience has no trouble working out whether she’s his mother, aunt or girlfriend, despite no costume changes.

“Holda, holda, holda! There’s going to be a fight in this house!”  boxing spruiker (Benj D’Addario) calls, hitting a large drum to encourage people into the real-life circus tent in the State Theatre’s courtyard.

India Mehta’s set is intimate and the story is told with simple props, the boxing ring a circle of heavy rope on a canvas floor, while Jenny Villa’s lighting and Clint Bracknell’s sound conveys the sounds and feeling of the times.

The scene with the Narkle family, and other Noongars watching Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock at the local cinema is hilarious.

King Hit is on at the State Theatre until October 4, tickets $40–50. Don’t miss it.

by JENNY D’ANGER