The Immigrant

Last night me and some of my fellow "CHUMs" paid a visit to The Phoenix Theatre, Coniston. The play - The Immigrant. It was well written and the sole actor held the audience's attention for the duration of the play and I even shed a few tears with him at the end.

It was about a man who reminisces about how he came to Australia with his father and was subsequently raised here. He had a hard life at the hands of his father and from his fellow Australians. It was assumed that because he was an immigrant that he was uneducated when in fact this was not the case. His life was one of violence; giving and receiving it. He won respect by using his fists and drinking his peers under the table.

He finally married after his parents passed but it was only to fill a void that they had left, it was not for love. He wanted someone to look after him. Their first child died in his arms not long after it was born and this had a profound effect on him. When the second child, a son, came along; he found that he could not love it, no matter how much he tried.

All too soon, he was following in the path of his own father and showing tough love in the form of his fists. He beat the child and was always telling him he was coward, until the day his son hit back and won the fight. After that he saw very little of him and lived a lonely life writing poetry. prose etc.

After downing a bottle of Vodka, the first act ended with him going out to seek his son and hopefully to put things right.  The second act  was the son's perspective on his life and him trying to understand what his father was about and why he did not love him despite the fact that he loved him unconditionally, no matter how badly he was treated.  This was conducted in his father's living room sitting beside his coffin - he had died the night he had gone out to seek his son's forgiveness.

The play left me with more questions than answers; I wanted to know if the son  would turn out like his father or would he finally break the cycle of "tough love" with his own son.  Will the relationship between him and his son be very different and different for the better.

It was very thought provoking play and I greatly enjoyed it.  The acting was superb and the evening went all too quick.