Humour and charm in a story of race, headwear and healing

ALANA Valentine's play Head Full of Love touches on the contentious issue of black-white relations with agility, sensitivity and courage.

Head Full of Love

THREE months ago, nine anti-discrimination commissioners met in Alice Springs to discuss a zero-tolerance policy to racism. Three weeks ago, in sub-zero temperatures, 6000 people descended on Alice Springs for the annual Beanie Festival, an exhibition of knitwear by Aboriginal women from remote areas.

Against these backdrops unfolds Alana Valentine's Head Full of Love. One of the exhibitors, a woman, sits on a mound of red country, crocheting. Another woman, nearby, sits in corrugated discomfort. The audience sit in their plush seats and gaze at the sitting women -- fascinated, uncomfortable.

Tilly (Roxanne McDonald) and Nessa (Colette Mann) are strangers whose stories intercept and entwine at crucial moments in their fraught lives. Tilly spends four hours a day -- three days a week -- on a dialysis machine away from country and family. Nessa is retreating from her own metropolitan paranoias, arriving in full tourist regalia in Alice.

The play follows the fractured path of their nascent relationship, the dispelling of spectres from their pasts and the weaving of their stories into beanies for the festival before time runs out.

Head Full of Love touches on the contentious issue of black-white relations with agility, sensitivity and courage. This is a community conversation that is long overdue.

Valentine explodes but reinforces stereotypes, presenting Tilly's and Nessa's relationship as honest, gritty and unsentimental. And ultimately, the two women meet in the deep embrace of a story. As part of the production's creation, the cast and crew experienced the plight of indigenous dialysis patients in Alice Springs first-hand.

McDonald and Mann are superlative storytellers who negotiate their way through their turbulent relationship with contagious humour and disarming charm. Director Wesley Enoch's touch is imprinted on every story -- honesty, simplicity and imagination pervading all.

Full of juxtapositions, this big-hearted play presents complex dilemmas through simple stories.

Caught in a mainstream theatrical tradition, the production doesn't allow enough time to sit and listen -- to silence, to dreaming, to space.

But Brett Collery's evocative score and Simone Romaniuk's urban-in-desert design are a welcome contrast to the narrative.

Valentine's meticulous research and passion for community continue in this work. Enoch firmly believes in theatre's power to heal.

The 2010 Darwin premiere production raised thousands of dollars to fund dialysis machines for remote indigenous communities in the Territory.

Head Full of Love is a head-warming, heart-searching story.

THEATRE
Head Full of Love. By Alana Valentine. Directed by Wesley Enoch. Queensland Theatre Company. Cremorne Theatre, Brisbane, July 12.

Until August 11. Tickets: $33-65. Bookings: www.qpac.com.au.