Theatre
Kirsty Marillier’s play Destiny captures both the menace of South Africa’s apartheid regime and the joyous energy it sought to stifle. By Alison Croggon.
South Africa’s apartheid era in focus in Destiny
In 1735, when he was 28, the Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of Systema naturae, his major work on the classification of nature. It wasn’t the earliest attempt to classify the bewildering phenomena of beings, sentient and otherwise, on this planet – the idea dates back to Aristotle – but Linnaeus was the first to place, controversially, human beings among the other animals.
He invented the scientific nomenclature we still use, a genus followed by a species name, and a nested, hierarchical system that was refined after Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution. By far the most harmful of his classifications – at least, for human society – was his false division of Homo sapiens into four varieties, typed by skin colour. By the 10th edition of Systema naturae, he settled on Homo americanus, Homo europaeus, Homo asiaticus and Homo africanus, assigning moral qualities – “light, wise, inventor” or “sly, sluggish, neglectful” – to each. Although Linnaeus’s hierarchy shifted over the years, Homo africanus always remained on the bottom, the “least evolved” of all human beings.
These taxonomies – which were no doubt influenced by Sweden’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in the 1700s – were picked up and elaborated in the 19th century by many scientists. They included the British inventor of eugenics, Francis Galton, the German eugenicist Ernst Haeckel, and the American doctor Samuel Morton, who collected hundreds of human skulls to support his theory that there were five different races and whose work was enthusiastically adopted by pro-slavery advocates.
Instead of going the way of the homunculus or Isaac Newton’s quest for the philosopher’s stone, these theories have proved depressingly resilient. They gave European colonialism a veneer of scientific respectability, justifying the invasion, oppression and enslavement of “inferior” peoples, and drove the murderous ideologies that plagued the 20th century and that now are returning on steroids in the 21st.
Not least among these was the segregationist system of apartheid that was enforced in South Africa from 1948 until it was repealed in 1991. Like Linnaeus, the nationalist government divided the human race into four. At the top were the minority white citizens, followed by Indians and Coloureds, with Black Africans at the bottom.
At the Melbourne Theatre Company, Kirsty Marillier’s powerful play Destiny, which follows the fortunes of a Coloured family who live in a regional town that is predominantly Black, is a multifaceted study of the intimate effects of this ideology. It’s set in the volatile era just before the 1976 Soweto Uprising, when protests against the compulsory teaching of Afrikaans in the school syllabus led to massacres of schoolchildren by South African police.
Despite its grim themes, Zindzi Okenyo’s production is marked by comic vitality. It’s not only the kind of deadly humour that people employ to defuse cruel conditions but a light, joyous ripple that infuses the domestic sphere, a laughter that shows so much else is possible. It’s also notable for moments of pure theatre – beautiful visual montages that lift the play’s realism into the poetic.
These shifts are realised through the design elements – Kelsey Lee’s lighting and Kelly Ryall’s sound are sympathetic and subtle. Sophie Woodward’s stylish set fills The Sumner theatre’s stage with a humble mid-century modern household – with telephone seat – that opens into a stoep and backyard, with a shop interior above. Between these spaces is a two-level diagonal ramp – the only place where we see the characters outside. Above everything is a triangle of airy blue sky, a glimpse of freedom.
Against this backdrop, we are immediately plunged into a troubled family drama, sparked by the return of student Ezra Jones (Barry Conrad) from Cape Town. We discover that he and Della Meth (played with an exacting volatility by Marillier herself) have history: he is her ex and an erotic spark still exists between them.
While Ezra chose university in Cape Town, Della refused the chance of education, preferring to work in the general store, her rebellion confined to occasionally cheating white people. She is fiercely protective of her 15-year-old brother, Rocky (Gaz Dutlow), and of her widowed father, Cliff (Patrick Williams). We gradually realise that beneath her decision to sacrifice a larger future is profound trauma, sparked not only by her mother’s death and her father’s continual grief but by her presence at the violent arrest of Ezra’s activist father.
Ezra, played by Conrad with swaggering charisma, represents everything Della wants to deny – especially his rebellion against the South African government. Rocky, on the other hand, is openly attracted by both Ezra and his ideas, and itches against Della’s restrictions. Living under apartheid, Ezra tells Rocky, is like being sour milk: “We have to smash the bottle.” Della responds with rage and panic: she is determined she and her family must survive and that means never rocking the boat, never stepping outside the respectable, law-abiding margin of safety.
In Della’s contradictions, Marillier portrays the internalisation of decades – nay, centuries – of brutal authoritarian power. Apartheid was, after all, only the culmination of a process that began with British and Dutch colonisation. She can’t imagine anything different and, for her, defiance means only imprisonment, destruction and death. Even so, we see how her desires escape her own strict prohibitions.
What this play does very well is to portray how ubiquitous dehumanisation warps the daily realities of those who suffer under it: the promise that is cut down or undramatically suffocated, how contingent the future becomes when one wrong word can mean the end of everything. The characters here are caught between despair, terror and hope, on the cusp of the existential wrench against unaccountable authority that requires a total reimagining of the inner self.
Marillier draws almost all her characters with a complex compassion that opens up the lose-lose dilemmas of being trapped in unjust racist systems enforced by economic and state violence. Thankfully, the play draws no neat moral: it leaves us to reflect on how the ideas that drove apartheid remain embedded in our past and present, here in Australia and elsewhere.
Only one character remains a mask. The Afrikaner police officer we meet briefly when he raids Della’s home is dankly and dangerously nasty, frankly enjoying his impunity and dominance. But this seems right to me. That kind of power, as we see daily in the news, has no nuance at all.
Destiny is playing at The Sumner theatre, Melbourne, until September 13.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on September 6, 2025 as "Warped reality".
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