HOME | BOOMERAMA | TRAVEL | EATS & DRINKS | THEATRE | MUSIC | ISSUES | HEALTH | NESTS & NEST EGGS | BOOKS | FASHION | ART & MUSEUMS

HOME > THEATRE > ARCHIVES 2009 >

Image: © John McDermott

POSTED: 29 MARCH 2009

Hatch

(Ten Days on the Island | Town Hall, Hobart, until 30 Mar | Cygnet Town Hall, 31 Mar | Swansea Town Hall, 2 Apr | Launceston Town Hall, 3–4 Apr | Rowella Hall, 5 Apr)

It was with a sense of déjà vu that I walked into the Hobart Town Hall to hear Joseph Hatch mount a defence of the penguin-oil industry. I have sat in the ornate ballroom many times, biro and pad in hand, to record the arguments aired at public meetings about environmental issues.

This time, it was about the slaughter of millions of penguins. But this time, it was to see Hatch, a one-man show by Stuart Devenie for the Auckland Theatre Company at Tasmania's Ten Days on the Island festival. Devenie is Hatch, the developer of Macquarie Island’s oil industry a hundred years ago.

Devenie reenacts one of the public lectures Hatch delivered around Australia and New Zealand in 1919, in defence of the penguin-oil industry, for which penguins were herded, clubbed and boiled for a pint of oil from each bird. Hatch became the target of photographers such as Frank Hurley, Antarctic explorers of the ilk of Sir Douglas Mawson, scientists and writers, who deplored the industry. It was a campaign that found overwhelming support from a public horrified by the deaths of dear little penguins.

This is a really good performance and all the more remarkable because the actual words are those of Hatch, as he fights against the environmental campaign mounted against him. Devenie delivers the speech using all the tricks he can muster — and he is a man with many tricks to draw upon —  from comedy to cunning argument against the forces marshalled against him. The occasional asides, as if to himself, of the tragic effect on his family, ensure we see him as a man, not a caricature.

The backdrop for the lecture is a series of slides of old black-and-white photographs,  which transport us to Macquarie Island,  and which Devenie incorporates into his performance by seemingly snapping at the projectionist for apparently failing to screen them on cue. But not only Macquarie Island — one of his international opponents, Baron Rothschild, is chided as a hypocrite for having a zebra harnessed in his carriage.

Hatch concludes his lecture by asking his audience to affirm a resolution in support of compensation for loss of his livelihood. It’s the end of the performance and we clap — thereby realising that we have been hoodwinked into giving him the support he seeks.