Tom Holloway’s play, Beyond the Neck, based on real accounts connected to the Port Arthur massacre is an uneasy watch, even as we approach the 30th anniversary of the tragedy: some things sitting below the surface still feel newly raw.
There’s a kind of silence that settles throughout the room during its current run at Theatre Works in St Kilda, as we explore the the trauma and grief of four strangers. The audience is drawn in slowly, with the weight of characters’ trauma building in its own time.
Directed by Suzanne Chaundy, the piece unfolds like a musical quartet rather than a traditional play. Four characters move in and out of each other’s stories, their voices overlapping, circling and eventually connecting.
A young boy, a reluctant teenager, a grieving mother and a tour guide. They start as strangers, but their lives begin to intersect in the aftermath of something unspeakable. There’s no single narrative thread to hold onto. Instead, it’s fragments. Memories. Small details that slowly form a bigger picture.
Beyond the Neck was written in 2008 and often alludes to how the ruins of the cafe, now a memorial garden to the 35 people killed in the massacre, sit alongside the convict-era ruins of the place, another violent and horrible story etched into its history. Yet the memories are too painful and raw to discuss, they remain unmentioned in the tours.
I visited Port Arthur – the real place – just a few weeks ago, for the first time in around ten years and this avoidance is just as true today as it was then. 35 names are on a memorial, beautiful reflection pools sit inside the former Broad Arrow Cafe, the pain and sadness associated with what happened there feels palpable, while unspoken. It’s hard not to shed a few tears even after all this time and be taken aback, anew, by the senseless loss.
What stands out about Beyond the Neck is the restraint. This is material that could easily tip into melodrama, but it never does. The performances are measured and deeply human, allowing the writing to breathe. Even moments of humour are handled lightly, offering brief relief without undercutting the gravity of what sits underneath.
It was coincidence that I had been so recently to Port Arthur before I saw the play, but it gave me an appreciation for the backdrop that was being described vividly by each of the characters. I can picture what they are talking about when they mention the gardens, the harbour, the asylum and separate prison. The staging is minimal, which works in its favour. It keeps the focus on the language and the rhythm of the piece, something Holloway leans into heavily. This is a work where how things are said matters just as much as what is said.
There’s no neat resolution here. No easy takeaway. Just like real life, as we as a nation still sit with the events of that day three decades on. What Beyond the Neck offers instead is something quieter and more honest. A sense of shared witnessing. A reminder that trauma doesn’t end, it shifts, it lingers, and it’s carried in different ways by different people.
Beyond the Neck is playing at Theatre Works in St Kilda until 4 April. It will also tour to. West Gippsland Performing Arts Centre, The Clocktower in Moonee Ponds and The Round at Nunawading.
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