The Jungle and the Sea Review, Melbourne Theatre Company

The Melbourne season of The Jungle and the Sea has opened at Melbourne Theatre Company Southbank Theatre, The Sumner, following its acclaimed season at Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre. Written and directed by S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack, The Jungle and the Sea is an impactful and deeply affecting production exploring the devastating disruption and chaos that civil war inflicts on ordinary lives.

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Set during the 26-year Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009), The Jungle and the Sea tells the story of one family caught in the devastating conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who fought for an independent Tamil state.

The audience first meets a close-knit family enjoying an ordinary day together, laughing, teasing and simply enjoying each other’s company. Then flyers fall from the sky announcing the beginning of war. Almost instantly, their everyday lives are replaced by fear, uncertainty and the need to survive.

As the war escalates, the family is torn apart. Some flee overseas, one joins the LTTE, while others stay behind, determined to keep their family together and hold onto some sense of normality despite the chaos around them.

Violence, death, betrayal and loss become part of everyday life, forcing each character to make difficult and sometimes impossible choices. But the play is not simply a war story. At its heart, it is about family, resilience and the ways people continue to find love, humour and moments of joy even when their world is falling apart.

The production’s sparse stage is deceptively simple. The revolving stage becomes an important part of the storytelling, shifting the characters through different places and moments while creating a sense that history itself is constantly turning around them. The live Carnatic music and sound design add another layer, at times creating an almost physical sense of tension, danger and conflict.

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The cast is phenomenal. Prakash Belawadi, Nadie Kammallaweera, Shiv Palekar, Dushan Philips, Rajan Velu, Anandavalli, Emma Harvie and Kalieaswari Srinivasan bring tremendous depth to their characters, while the live musicians Aswin Selvanathan and Hari Sivanesan are an integral part of the production rather than simply providing accompaniment.

At almost three hours, with two intervals and three parts, The Jungle and the Sea is certainly a theatrical marathon. It demands a significant commitment from its audience, but the scale of the story and the ensemble performances make that investment worthwhile.

Following the success of Counting and Cracking, S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack have once again created a story that connects a major historical event with the intimate experiences of one family. The result is a production that feels both epic in scale and personal.

The Jungle and the Sea doesn’t offer an easy story. Instead, it asks us to consider what happens to ordinary people when the world around them is torn apart, and how people continue to love, laugh, make choices and hold onto their dignity even when almost everything else has been taken from them.

The play well deserved its standing ovation. The story lingers long after the curtain falls.