Reynolds-Diarra’s Skylab: family fun in Esperance

If Melanie Reynolds-­Diarra could turn Skylab into three plays, the individual elements might work better on stage.

Donnathia Gentle, Alan Little, Jacob Narkle and Eva Barlett in Black Swan’s Skylab. Picture: Dana Weeks.

Skylab is so jam-packed with ideas that it explodes on to the stage with the volatility of its namesake, the NASA space station that had its fiery finale in 1979 over remote Western Australia. As space junk it was supposed to land in the sea. Instead it gained international notoriety (and a $400 littering fine from the Shire of Esperance) when it fell to earth north of the Great Australian Bight. The re-entry of each mangled piece triggered sonic booms that sent the nervous citizens of coastal Esperance running indoors.

In this play, the Aboriginal family of Nev, Nan, Jem, Uncle Harv and the three kids reckons everything’s changed by the skyfall. Uncle Harv dons a tinfoil helmet and brandishes a metal divining rod as he waits for the apocalypse. Actor Gary Cooper amusingly conveys Harv’s belief that indigenous supernatural powers are no less powerful than the metaphysics that got Skylab up into space in the first place.

The kids — Eva Bartlett, Donnathia Gentle and Jacob Narkle, who stole the show on opening night — act out their own cosmic adventure from the safety of the couch. It’s their version of Monkey, the cult Japanese television show that kids in the 1980s grew up watching (including the indigenous playwright Melodie Reynolds-Diarra and director Kyle Morrison).

Meanwhile parents Jem and Nev (a winning combination in Alan Little and Laila Bano Rind) suddenly find they get whatever they wish for: a full fridge, a huge diamond ring and an Elvis ­wedding.

It’s fertile if far-fetched ground for comedy, with some wonderfully cheeky lines given to the ­lively cast playing the close-knit Aboriginal family.

Like many new plays that have undergone a long gestation, Skylab suffers from overstretched ambition and too many thematic threads. The rather earnest ending, which sees the spiritual figure of Nan restore the family, is anticlimactic.

One wishes that Reynolds-­Diarra could turn Skylab into three plays, because the individual elements — the children’s skits, the hilarious domestic sitcom scenes between Nev and Jem, and Nan’s supernatural presence — all offer the promise of good dramatic ­material.

Indigenous theatre company Yirra Yaakin, this play’s co-producer with Black Swan, has in the past hosted skits and short plays written around local indigenous humour that are howlingly funny and refreshingly new.

Skylab as a whole may not quite hit the mark, but like the wayward space station, its parts make a memorable impact.

Skylab. by Melodie Reynolds-Diarra. Black Swan State Theatre Company and Yirra Yaakin. State Theatre Centre, Perth, August 18. Until September 2. Karratha, September 5; Carnarvon, September 8.