Shocking, hilarious, and thought-provoking: Chenturan Aran’s unique comedy Cut Chilli is an explosive ode to difficult families, identity politics, and the shadowy Sri Lankan adoption trade. The New Ghost Theatre Company enthralled onlookers with a diverse, six-person cast and intimate set. Awarded the Union House Theatre Award for Best New Writing, Aran weaves a complex, and surprisingly fresh narrative of displacement. Sri Lanken Australian adoptee, Jamie (Ariyan Sharma), battles with the mingled love and suspicion of his adoptive mother, Katherine (Susie Lindeman), while wondering about the birth mother he never knew. Returning home to a chaotic family dinner in Western Australia, Jamie is on a mission to untangle his family’s ‘white lies’ and uncover his adoption papers.
With little preconceptions, I found myself venturing down a Woolloomooloo alley to the Old Fitz, Australia’s last surviving pub theatre. Tucked into a quiet pocket of terrace houses, the words ‘Box Office’ glow in neon out of a gap between the bricks. An eclectic pub with deer hooves for a coat rack flows onto the street corner with Melbourne-esque charm. After grabbing drinks, an attendant rang a bell and ushered the audience behind the bar, past the kitchen, and down a flight of stairs to the 55-seat basement theatre. What the production lacked in size, it made up for in intimacy and quirk. Directed by David Burrowes, the play blends tongue-in-cheek irreverence with a deeper questioning of the blood bonds and ancestral ties which shape us.
Cut Chilli’s cringe comedy pushes boundaries with abundant one-liners on Australia’s racial and cultural tensions. A continued jab at the charade of wokeism is grounded by cultural and community consultants, Yamane Fayed and Lynelle Long. Jamie expresses his frustration that being white is assumed to be the status quo and implores his mother to admit her whiteness. “Well then, I’m a f*cking albino cloud!”, Katherine exclaims. The audience roared. Jamie’s girlfriend, a Muslim activist Zahra (Kelsey Jeanell), makes regular updates to her podcast episode dubbed Decolonising my Boyfriend. Jamie’s father, a bumbling politician (Brendan Miles), makes frequent, awkward attempts to showcase his political correctness to Zahra. This includes pulling an enormous prayer mat into the living room before dinner and commanding Alexa to play an “Islam call to prayer song”.
Aran’s depiction of complex mother and son dynamics are deeply touching. In an interview Chenturan Aran posits that Cut Chilli is, “a universal tale about a family struggling to find open dialogue and compassion to learn about each other’s secret pains and losses”. He thinks that stories may be our best tool to discuss imperfect histories. Illegal adoptions were rife in the 1970s and 1980s, with up to 11,000 Sri Lankan children sold to European families. Baby farms preyed on vulnerable pregnant women and dealt false paperwork to both parties in profitable exchanges. In 1987, this led to a temporary ban on foreign adoptions —- however, many broken families such as Jamie’s still call for answers.
Soham Apte’s set was colourful and innovative. Partitions carved out the small stage, and tense domesticity exploded from a simple, family dinner table. Childhood photos of Jamie pinned onto pastel walls in white frames subtly pointed to Australia’s assimilatory culture. The lighting, conducted by Isobel Morrissey and Poppy Townsend, was eclectic and vibrant, and Jamie Gray’s interspersed videography was evocative. Between acts, footage of a woman speaking Tamil to a faraway ocean decorated the partitions. Her prayer-like story of the significance of a stone on the beach embodied the littoral connection between the coasts of Sri Lanka and Western Australia. Jamie and Katherine share a touching moment on a suspended hammock after dinner where they briefly imagine a life with biological parents and children. Audiences are asked, “is it different, being held by the body you came from?”
Cut Chilli will be showing at the Old Fitz Theatre each Tuesday-Sunday until Saturday 27 July.
