21 Hearts is the harrowing yet heartwarming true story of Vivian Bullwinkel, a nurse stationed in Singapore during the Second World War, who survived unspeakable horrors as a prisoner of the Japanese army.
Playwright Jenny Davis has also written a book for young readers, published by Fremantle Press, about Bully (as she was known to her fellow nurses) and her experience in the war. I have not read Courage Be My Friend but if the play is anything to go by readers should have tissues at the ready.
Rebecca Davis as Vivian Bullwinkel, along with five fellow nurses, is excited by the sentiment that “nursing lets you travel” before being dragged through the most traumatic experience one could imagine. Davis and the rest of the cast are convincing in their deep attachment to each other, which makes their inevitable end even more heartbreaking.
The cast of 21 Hearts. Photography by Stewart Thorpe.
It is not spoilers to tell you that Vivian, is one of 22 nurses who are forced into the ocean by Japanese soldiers and gunned down. The programme tells you this straight away. Davis’ script gives the departed a chance to not only tell their story, but show the audience they were real people, with hopes and dreams and families missing them at home.
The set, designed by Director Stuart Halusz, integrates a screen into a backdrop of wooden slats, which opens out to create various camps for the POWs as they are shunted around Singapore. With only a few box crates as props the cast and screen immerse us in a frontline hospital, an overcrowded ship, the ocean, a beach and the jungle it borders, and a filthy prisoner of war camp.
The cast of 21 Hearts. Photography by Stewart Thorpe.
Even without the backdrop giving us their location the cast, under Movement Director Rachael Bott, convey their surroundings with ease. Ben Collins’ sound design and Rowan van Blomestein’s lighting also exquisitely capture the effect of being bombed by a fighter plane. More than once I felt the need to duck along with the characters.
A run time of two hours with no interval is really pushing how long an audience will sit through a performance. Combined with the characters’ relentless suffering when I emerged from the auditorium I felt like I too had been through an ordeal. Vivian Bullwinkel’s story is one I won’t forget in a hurry. THEATRE 180 have told a classic war story, with traditionally saintly characters who have no limit to their perseverance, ribald Aussie humour, and a hymn from the choir for good measure.
THEATRE 180 is bringing 21 Hearts back to the theatre in Como in October, check out their website for tickets. In the meantime, at the ANZAC service this Thursday I will have 21 more people to thank for their sacrifice.