It’s a cold Sunday night and I find myself heading into Carlton to see Thomas Papathanassiou’s Looming the memory. I have seen the play twice before; both times in 2005,

The first on a cold Sunday July night in one of the small and intimate spaces in Trades Hall in Carlton to a small and appreciative audience of about 60 people.
The second on a Saturday night in October in the much larger Gasworks Theatre in Port Melbourne with a large and appreciative audience of 250 people.

So I went to La Mama knowing that I had previously enjoyed the show and that I was interested to see how the play had developed in the intervening four years.
Looming the memory is a memorable and engaging show. A show which one day will be acknowledged as a ground breaking because it avoids the three common tropes of Australian Greek theatre.

It isn’t a story about the difficulties that migrant children face living in bicultural world. Nor is it a comedy which plays with farcical situations about the lives of young Greek Australians. Nor is it a family biography about a parent, grandparent or family member who survives or is destroyed by the ‘migrant experience.’
Looming the memory is a text about a young person’s observations about returning to the family village and the characters that he encounters.

The text interweaves a series of stories which shift between the present and the past; stitching together a complex and overlapping story with a dynamic and overlapping narrative.

The story shifts across time – between a present and a past – as well as between various characters in the village who are part of the narrative. It also features a narrator who narrates the events and life stories of the various characters in the play as well as being an active participant in the story.
The script by Papathanassiou develops a rich and interlocking personal family history which is affecting in its power to reveal the characters thoughts and motivations.

In the process it astutely explores ideas of home, place and belonging. The performance by Thomas Papathanassiou was masterful.
Alone on stage for close to 80 minutes he performed with a verve, exuberance and physicality which gave the story momentum.

The rapid fire shifts in time and in character were embodied through a series of physical transformations which made the characters come alive. Papathanassiou pitched his voice wonderfully; one minute the grating voice of an old crone who is alleged to have the power of curse and the next the steely voice of a bitter uncle warning him to leave the village .

This is a bravura performance which demanded a tireless performance from Papathanssiou. The script has gone through a series of major rewrites since its first development season as part of the Antipodes Festival in 2005.

While the script now has a more logical structure and coherent flow, it has lost some its earlier pathos. The intimate performance space at La Mama also did not give Papathanassiou the luxury to work the space as effectively as I recall him doing in the earlier productions.

So the pace of the show at times felt a little rushed as did some of the shifts in character. However these are minor quibbles and I expect Looming the memory to enjoy a successful season when in New York later this year as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.