A scarred colonial psyche

Anne-Louise Rentell’s production of Marcel Dorney’s new play, Charcoal Creek, imagines a past shimmering with brutality. Set in Charcoal Creek, NSW (now Unanderra), in the late 1870s, the land is lush but devastation – the murdering of Aboriginal people – has scarred the environment and the psyche of the colonials. The narrative doesn’t deal head-on with black and white Australia but instead recreates the kindling of fear and prejudice; the burnt landscape of the mind.