Tim winton's play 'rising water' documents the lives of three div no-hopers trying to exist in solitude, ironically, however, in a somewhat communal fashion. They live on a bay/marine/pier area thing, it's Australia day. One is fat, one is old and one is a lesbian, all at their own different levels of inebriation through out the play. Am I certain that what I think about this play is even close to accurate? Of course not. Am I going to pretend that my perceptions hold legitimacy and present them with confidence for the sake of writing what will hopefully amount to some semblance of a half decent review? Of course I am. Much like most of the things we have been exposed to in literature thus far this year, rising water is depressing, and, if one likes to use adjectives generally reserved for describing desert areas*, 'dry and arid'. Seemingly to me, winton has tried to use the metaphor of living on a docked boat to portray these people (the fat one, the old one and the lesbian) as being free (open bodies of water like the one they are docked on draws connotations of 'freedom'), but it is a faux sense of freedom (if you haven't picked up on it so far, THEYRE DOCKED, ie tied down, stuck, etc, etc, etc) as they all have their own baggage (weight, age, and sexual preference being the lease of it.) A drunken, loose, female backpacker flops onto the fat ones boat, long winded, wordy monologues with confusing subject matter (political charge? something about drowning? I don't know) ensue, allegations of paedophilia and maiesiophilia run rampant, John Howard (fat one) succeeds to skull VB like it's 1984, wear a shirt that is an atrocity on my feeble human eyes and be fat. A blonde haired youth paddles along the front of the stage melodramatically (nobody in the history of the world has ever leant forward that much or pushed down that hard when paddling a dingy boat), and his presence is never acknowledged (so avant-garde), and the people in charge of this play forfeit any chance of using the one attractive cast member as a last ditch attempt to capture somebodies attention. Rising water was about as entertaining channel 31's 'sense with dollars' program, it's only saving grace the set, which was kind of ok if you like things that are shit.
*one does (the one in question here being myself)
