User Reviews

This TV play by the distinguished playwright Louis Nowra made a great impression, at least in Australia, when it was first shown, though it was probably rather too intense and disturbing for a wide audience. Since then, it seems to have been overlooked. Set just after the second world war, it is the story of a group of refugees from several European countries who are brought to a new "land of hope" only to succumb, one by one, to a deadly viral disease. Quarantined at South Head, with only the dedicated doctor and small staff, they can see the city of Sydney in the distance. The play is not, however, one of those disease extravangzas common now. It is about the interactions of these isolated and seemingly doomed people, who cannot even speak each other's languages. (The actors speak in their own tongues, subtitled.) A very disturbed and disturbing girl, survivor of a concentration camp, pretends to be a translator for three of the languages, but we know that she is not translating; rather, she is filling the hapless "displaced persons" with the distrust and loathing of all human beings she has learnt. There is a solution to the situation, of a kind, but not one to negate the power of the general tragic truth of the play. If there's any way of getting hold of this, I recommend it highly.