Enlightenment (The Enlightenment of the Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, and the Encounter with the Monkey King, Great Sage, Equal of Heaven), Elbow Room ·
State Theatre Centre Studio, 15 December 2022 ·

Marcel Dorney, the director of Enlightenment – Joe Lui’s riotous jumble of ancient fact, folklore and fiction – says “a director’s greatest gift to a production is their ignorance”.

It’s a judicious observation, and matches the greatest gift a production can give its audience; its ignorance, and through the narrative, knowledge, insight and, dare I say it, enlightenment.

Buddhism is the most enigmatic and supple of religions, absorbing philosophy and precept, history and allegory into its system, and Lui has gathered them all to tell a story of modern Australian dispossession, misogyny and racism that works far better than you could imagine.

Sid (Alice Qin), a rich young woman, idles her obscenely perfect life away with empty, disappointing sex she conjures up on dating apps; Sage (Merlynn Tong), a child of the other side of the tracks, has gone viral with a violent, anti-cop post.

Sid and Sage are, as fate would have it, Siddhartha Gautama – the Buddha, and Sun Wu Kong – the Monkey King, and their story parallels, in large part, their encounter in the seminal 16th Century Chinese novel Journey to the West.

In place of the mythical gods the Monkey King confronts in the old story, Lui introduces two police, the amiable Brad (John Marc Desengano) and his psychopathic partner Steve (Conor Gallacher), and it’s through them that Sid and Sage learn the reality of power and powerlessness, sexual and racial hatred, violence and retribution.

Enlightenment is a savage story, but, often, a savagely comic one. Lui’s powers of observation have never been more acute, his humanity more encompassing or his demons more exposed (Lui, for years now the standard bearer for Perth’s alternative theatre, famously, worries about his world, and his world, famously, worries for him).

In the play he often returns to the Four Noble Truths that are at the core of Buddhist teaching and the journey to Enlightenment, and in particular, the second, that the source of suffering is desire.

It’s a blinding insight, one of the universal founding truths of mankind and its religions, and, one suspects, the guiding principle of much of Lui’s work.

Enlightenment is dominated by Tong’s performance as Sage, the Monkey King. She reshapes herself as demon, god, fearless and fearful girl but maintains a recognisable, consistent personality, essential to the play, throughout.

The rest of the cast are impeccable. Qin transitions from the vacuous to the sublime as, like the prince Gautama, she cast aside the world to find herself, and Desengano and Gallacher are no mere double act, with angels and demons all their own.

Emily Tomlins, the co-artistic director with Dorney of Melbourne’s impressive Elbow Room theatre company, moves through the story as a narrator and occasional character with authority and sudden fire.

Cherish Marrington and illustrator 巴丢草 (Badiucao) give the production an atmosphere of multicultural classical forms that respond to the story’s mythological provenance and provide the spaces for Lui, Dorney and their cast to tell their modern, all too actual, tale.

You feel this is the story Joe Lui has set himself to tell through his whole career. It’s well worth sharing with him.

Enlightenment’s brutally short season runs until Saturday 17 December 2022 at the State Theatre Centre studio.

Pictured top is Merlynn Tong, whose performance is essential to the play. Photo: Devika Bilimoria