The stage is blanketed in what appears, at first, to be blue carpet. In the background is the corner of a dilapidated house, the door left ajar. But the blue turns out to be sand, slipping through the actors’ fingers, and the door turns out to be a portal to somewhere else entirely.
Such is the strangeness and liminality of Meet Me at Dawn, the Scottish playwright Zinnie Harris’s meditation on grief, which debuted at Edinburgh international festival in 2017.
Partners Robyn (Jing-Xuan Chan) and Helen (Sheridan Harbridge) find themselves marooned on a beach after a boating accident. Are they concussed? Are they lost? The two gradually realise that not is all as it seems and the usual laws of time and space have been abandoned. As one character says, “There is a strange place called grief, and all the rules have changed.”
Only Chan and Harbridge appear on stage throughout the play but both embody a third character – a mysterious woman whose only speech is to echo what Robyn and Helen say. In this way, the play also contains elements of psychological thriller: who is the woman and what does she want with the couple? Harris takes cues from the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice for this story and its allegorical nature becomes clearer as it progresses.
For a story about loss, Meet Me at Dawn has many surprisingly funny moments. The chemistry between the actors is a big part of this, as Chan and Harbridge bring the domestic bickering of a long-term couple to life. Even at moments of tension, a one-liner – mostly from Harbridge as the headstrong Helen – will have the audience in stitches. This kind of comic relief is often welcome but there is perhaps too much of the play’s slim 75-minute runtime dedicated to this back-and-forth dynamic.
To counter, Chan provides a hefty dose of pathos as Robyn comes to grips with what is actually happening. The character often breaks the fourth wall and sometimes takes the stage alone for monologues, shrouded in darkness physical and spiritual. Chan’s confusion morphing slowly but surely into sorrow hits right in the gut – she is an expressive, compelling actor with fine vocal control.
Somewhat serendipitously, this story has a bit in common thematically and stylistically with Andrew Haigh’s haunting film All of Us Strangers, which is in Australian theatres now. Both explore what it means to let go of a loved one, as well as the often senseless and hallucinatory nature of grieving. It is almost as though separate and parallel realities exist, which eventually come together when the emotional state moves from denial to acceptance.
Katy Maudlin’s production takes a minimalist approach. There are few bells and whistles in the design of the show – both characters are dressed simply in everyday clothing, there are barely any special effects and Daniel Nixon’s sound design is admirably restrained, drawing on silence as much as sparse piano compositions. The one exception is a moment when Helen’s hand is suddenly covered in blood, pulled off so seamlessly that it provokes a loud gasp from the audience.
This production of Meet Me at Dawn is beautifully rendered and acted, with two excellent actors at its centre. Harris’s script has moments of great emotion and poetry, and Chan and Harbridge’s realisation of it is often deeply moving – but there is something jarring about the pace of the story, and the way that it ends, which means it doesn’t entirely stick the landing.
Meet Me at Dawn is at the Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Theatre Company, until 16 March.
