Theatre / “A Stroke of Luck”, Gretel Burgess. At QL2 Studio, Gorman Arts Centre, until February 26. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

THE success of this one-hour dance-drama built around the story of Gretel Burgess, lies in the powerful performance of Burgess herself, but its poignancy lies in the depiction of a mother-daughter relationship.

Burgess, who at age 42 suffered a devastating stroke, is a trained dance artist who uses all of her body to indicate to us, largely without words the inner and outer conflicts associated with the devastation of her condition, indicated by a flash of stage lightning.

Her 18-year-old daughter Chloe McDougall, eight at the time of the stroke, is the other half of this tender explanation of a condition that one in six Australians will suffer in their lifetime. Their contrasting reactions are held in tight counterpoint by director-dramaturg Pip Buining to create an entertaining hour that belies the challenging subject matter.

The evening begins unpromisingly with two extraneous dancers wafting around the foyer, taking away from the power of the opening.

In the opening sequence, Gretel depicts the stresses of life, which she believes led to her seizure, through a series of abstract body movement, quickly interspersed with a moment of joy as she and Chloe whirl around the stage using a shopping trolley as a choreographic vehicle – the mundane meeting the ecstatic.

As the tripartite show progresses though its parts – Coagulation, Diversion and Liability – words intervene in the form of voiceovers.

We hear the voices of a Dutch doctor who theorises that strokes may be related to high levels of personal tension and Federal MP Warren Entsch, speaking to the parliament during National Stroke Week 2015, in which he names Gretel specifically as one of the one in six to suffer a stroke.

But undoubtedly the centre of this dance-drama is the scene set to sounds evoking the Daintree Forest, where Gretel’s life was changed forever.

A mighty flash of stage lightning – a Damascus Road moment – indicates the moment when Gretel is struck down, after which, through excruciating physical and mental effort and sustained power. She raises herself to an upright position while impassively, upstage, Chloe licks a Cornetto ice-cream.

However, the impassiveness does not last long and in a litany, Chloe reveals what she and the family did not understand at the time.

The final part of the play, the aftermath of the stroke, is a bit of a romp.

Here Gretel becomes a happy shopaholic, dancing around the stage to the “Flashdance” number “Maniac”, gets the family into trouble over a bio-security lapse to do with a big Granny Smith apple and brings on a momentary rift between mother and daughter, shown wordlessly until the final, rollicking conclusion.

This is an unexpected play, totally without self-pity and staged with high production standards by an expert team.

Thumbs up to the beautiful professionally produced program – a relief for program-starved audiences to be able to read who created the work.