The Bogus Woman .


Saturday 18th March


This was one of the most moving performances I have ever seem. It brought me to tears, literally, and I can’t tell you the last time that has happened. The flyer describes the performance as “…a powerful, passionate…”. Yes. The Independent reads “Kay Adshead’s angry stripped-down script bleeds humanity…”powerful words describing an equally powerful performance.

Sarah Niles’ portrayal of an asylum seeking African in England in 1997 is nothing short of breathtaking. She broke my heart. She finished to a standing ovation and I got the impression that this wasn’t her first. I marvelled at how this woman could give this performance each day during the Festival and still have something of herself left. They say good soccer players leave nothing on the field, well this woman left nothing on the stage.

The audience consisted of about 250 people, with only a couple of seats empty. This was a matinee performance and I believe most, if not all, of the evening performances were sold out. It wasn’t possible to define the crowd as anything in particular. There were all ages and both genders represented. The theatre itself was something of a surprise. It was an old warehouse prettied up for the occasion. Queens’ Theatre??? I wonder if She would be happy about this. Hardly glamorous. The chairs were attached to scaffolding, old rusty iron walls were masked by black plastic, as was the gap between the top of the walls and the roof. The shiny lighting units were attached to old wooden girders with flaking or non-existent paint, the contrast obvious, and strange giant white fibre balls of light hung from the same girders, looking very out of place. Was this all to set the mood for the show I wondered. Probably just a sign of the desperate need for theatre space in Adelaide during a Festival of such great proportions.

The show began with a single woman on stage. The only props were a bag and a bench. Apart from the sounds of aeroplanes landing and taking off, I was unaware of any other background noise throughout the performance except for the tribal music that played when the actor, in character as the African asylum seeker, reminisced about her homeland, and dreamed of the better place that her family had gone to.

The woman claimed that she had fled her country in fear of her life after she had written a controversial article in a local paper. At one point in the play she described how her house had been invaded and each member of her family, her mother, father, sister, husband and baby, were brutally murdered. She then claimed that she had been raped by all three of the attackers. She wasn’t believed. The authorities had heard it all before, and after 8 months of moving her from detention centre to detention centre, she was returned to her country.

During this time she was accused of being involved in an uprising and witnessed violent attacks on other inmates. At one point she was granted temporary admission on the grounds that she reside a specified address for six months. She was not allowed to work during this time and she took the audience through the financial hardship she experienced. When she was evicted after five months, any chance of her being granted permanent residency was shattered. She was reduced to prostitution to try to survive before being picked up and charged with absconding.

The performance concluded with one of the English customs officers summing up how the woman had been deported. She had been protected by some friends on her arrival, moving from safe house to safe house. However three months after returning to her country she had been found shot dead.

As the standing ovation died down, people began to leave. I could not move. I just stared forward, my friend looking equally stunned. The people next to me wanted to leave and we were blocking their exit. Reluctantly we got out of their way and left the theatre. We walked three blocks before speaking to each other and even then it was very little. I have never seen a performance that left me feeling so stripped of my emotions, so raw, so bare.