Cover Image: A stylised promotional image for Bush Chook, evoking the outback setting and uneasy intimacy at the heart of this tense two‑hander. Photo supplied.

Bush Chook – The Šimić Theatre Co.
Presented by The Blue Room Theatre
Summer Nights, Fringe World Festival

Content warnings: this show and review reflect on sexual assault and gaslighting.

Bush Chook is a daring, energetic and gripping two-hander play, written and directed by Hayley Perrin and devised with the cast and Sean Mudariki. Skilfully utilising the language of contemporary realism, it stages a patriarchal dynamic subtly and scarily infesting a budding connection between two young people who meet at a roadhouse while travelling alone through central Australia.

Lea Šimić (also producer) brought a gleeful and honest quality to 19-year-old Mary. Youthfully unapologetic, her authentic feminist wit is a balm during an otherwise apprehensive journey for the audience. Mary’s zingers unintentionally but nonetheless playfully fly in the face of predatory behavior, eliciting laughter from and bolstering Tuesday’s full house.

Matthew J. Young exercised range and care to realise 26-year-old Angus, a character clearly aware of his dishonest intentions yet continuing to lead Mary along. Amidst his other contrasting expressions of empathy and vulnerability, ultimately Angus’s “decent man” qualities are bluntly outweighed by how he undermines Mary’s own feelings and never forms genuine consent with her many other times.

The dialogue’s momentum was largely driven by each character’s light-hearted attempts toward building a romantic connection. Angus’s forwardness and attempts to control the direction of things is unwittingly thrown off by younger  Mary’s slower, self-paced explorations of newfound experiences. Their awkwardly upbeat lines and sudden physical fumbles were made ever more real by breezily natural delivery, demonstrating hard work and dexterity from both actors.

Through shifts in lighting (uncredited) and pace that evoke subconscious dreaminess, both characters express a recognition and desire for a happy and traditional  heteronormative love story – but their reality is muddied by Angus’s recurring sexism and Mary’s gullible trust. Though intertwined with the familiar voice of early adulthood in all its warmth, mettle, fear and glee, the non-linear script and sinister transitions ultimately weave a story too real and recognisable to ignore: the selfishness and emotional entitlement of a young man gradually manipulating a more sensitive, caring, younger woman into giving him the attention and forgiveness he wants.

One of the strongest, most courageous choices of this work was that it doesn’t centre around a singular event of violence. In a patriarchal society far too concerned  with finding ways to let men off the hook for harming women and girls, Bush Chook  shows the unacknowledged layers of disrespect and coercion already created by  predatory men even without staging assault.

It shows how r*pe is not a singular event, but is deliberately and routinely enabled by many other forms ofprejudice and selfishness that precede it.  By staging only Mary’s buoyant insouciance and Angus’s self-conscious nudging, Bush Chook contributes  a vital representation of gender-based violence as a dynamic system of actions that  centres masc entitlement at the cost of fem autonomy well before other lines are crossed.

I happened to see a much shorter version of this work at TILT last year, which I thoroughly appreciated and respected, but also left in intense emotional pain. Knowing the work’s style and intentions made seeing this full-length version much easier for me,  but it would greatly improve audience accessibility if The Blue Room Theatre and FRINGE WORLD’s websites could include a document with detailed content warnings and support lines for shows exploring these topics.

Care for audiences in this way does not compromise the honesty and value of brave theatre like BushChook, but rather enables its strengths to be more fully engaged with and appreciated by disparate audiences. Nevertheless, scattered through Bush Chook were also believable, uplifting moments of humour, tenderness and joy – but if you may find naturalistic dynamics of r*pe culture upsetting to sit through, consider organising some post-show support before holding space for this important, intelligent and affirming show.

Though there were many gut punch moments for the audience, each aspect of this work gratefully holds a mirror to adolescence amid patriarchy, trembling with a realness that must be seen if it is to be challenged and healed from. It rejects singular, simplified, “newsworthy” narratives for the multi-faceted truth. To me, this kind of balanced but direct playwriting has the potential to be realised as a main stage professional production following some further development.

Strong, unexpectedly inconspicuous and carefully crafted, Bush Chook is a mature new play well worth staging, supporting, witnessing, and discussing.

Bush Chook showed at The Blue Room Theatre for Summer Nights x FRINGE WORLD from 3^rd – 7^th February.