Theatre / The Jungle and the Sea. By S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack. The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre. August 9. Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN

At nearly three hours long The Jungle and the Sea is an epic and deeply felt treatment of the civil war in Sri Lanka.

The cast is large, there’s two live musicians and the whole thing takes place on a constantly revolving stage against walls that look as if they are pockmarked by bullets. And powerfully heading the company as Gowrie, the matriarch of a family deeply affected by the war, is choreographer and dancer Anandavalli.

The family is all together in 1995 but are soon to be driven apart.  One flees to Sydney and becomes a lawyer. The rest are left battling death and injury and flight and conflicting loyalties in a situation that worsens over the years. Gowrie takes on a blindfold  which she will not take off until the family is reunited.

Toward the end of the play a situation with echoes of Antigone arises. Issues of loyalty become focussed and destructive. There are no good solutions and no easy reunion for Gowrie and  her family.

Meantime the stage keeps revolving as events worsen. It’s a great piece of design which probably worked better in the original staging in Sydney. There are little visuals  like miniature trains and trucks during travel and a tiny Sydney Harbour Bridge that quickly locates one scene between the lawyer and her blinded father, which are harder to pick up if you are not looking down upon them in a steeply raked auditorium like Belvoir Theatre.

But the grinding journeys that so many of the characters go through perhaps play better for being at eye level for much of the stalls. It’s a minor quibble in a long rich show about issues of conflict and belief and family that cannot be ignored.

News all day, every day at CityNewsQBN.com.au.