CRYPTOLINK: Bush balladry laments extinction

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They Saw a Thylacine is a poignant, theatrical tale with a moral message on conservation.

Reviewer rating:

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Sarah Hamilton and Justine Campbell
Rehearsal room, North Melbourne Town Hall, until October 5

The current mass extinction is unlike the other five in the history of the planet. Humans are here to witness it, to contribute to it, and we have the knowledge, if not the collective desire, to help ameliorate it.

Such is the moral intensity behind They Saw a Thylacine, as it sets up two competing echoes of the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger, which survived into the age of silent cinema and continues to haunt the Australian imagination.

Sarah Hamilton and Justine Campbell tag-team through the thylacine's final days, in a rather beautifully crafted poetic text that achieves the galloping dramatic action of bush balladry, even adopting a loose rhyming scheme without sounding affected.

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In one strand, a zookeeper's daughter keeps vigil over the last thylacine in captivity in the 1930s. She has been barred from taking over the zoo because she's a woman and must watch helplessly as ignorant labourers hired during the Depression shirk their duties, with inevitable results. In the other, a bushie's daughter hunts a thylacine in Tasmania, hoping to claim a rich bounty for a live specimen. She runs into competition, but is determined to stay in charge, even if it means letting her quarry go free.

Read on...