Melbourne Theatre Company’s Before I Forget starts in a surprisingly clever way, thanks to the brilliant mind of writer, director, and Yagera/Butchulla theatre maker, Kamarra Bell-Wykes.
In the Fairfax Studio, a semi-circular platform stage sits before the audience. Below its dimmed veil of light, designed by Katie Sfetkidis, its visibility houses modular sections emulating a remote house in Queensland, ensconced in an illuminating backdrop of starry, lit skies, singing birds, and trilling crickets. All surrounded by a land lovers’ paradise.
It is a clear juxtaposition from its outer environs; inside this house is disarray. In a set designed to perfection by Sophie Woodward, flattened papers are lying on the porch.
There’s a shabby, unmade single bed, unable to right itself. A single, flimsy blanket, loosely hanging over a couch. A tiny wooden table with two chairs, smothered in mess. And a double bed, entangled in tumbled sheeting.
There’s a For Sale sign visible just to the right of the house’s front entrance. The song Crossroads, by Tracey Chapman, a socially minded musician, is playing through the speakers. Yet there is faith beyond the clutter.
Woodward creates an oracular, grassy front yard, lined with shrubbery, jutting out to the audience. Just enough to emulate a kind of inner call. It is an invitation for us to embody an understanding of the wishes and wants: to return to a celestial nest of rich ancestry, identity and legacy.
We are introduced to Faith Well (Roxanne McDonald), a prominent linguist and academic, well-respected in her circle as she once played a critical role in Aboriginal language reclamation. After we finish clapping and Faith starts speaking, the audience believes she is presenting a celebration of identity before this very show.
But Bell-Wykes adds nuance to place us in a different frame of mind immediately. Taking us further than just a celebration of history, legacy and cultural identity to a different perspective from the outset: a world of later-life struggles.
Before I Forget is a fictionalised, biographical show about Kamarra Bell-Wykes’ own reimagined storytelling traversing fear, grief and despair. Of coping with an end-of-life scenario that is the heartbreaking journey of losing her mother to early-onset dementia, watching her mother’s steady decline happen in front of her very eyes.
This tale is reimagined in an uplifting way, with dollops of humour thrown in, adding more spicy ingredients: the perspectives of three generations of women trying to resolve long-held family conflicts while undergoing a brutal undertaking.
To help bring dignity and presence to those elders past and present, Before I Forget shows us how one can heal old timelines: by re-enacting them so they don’t disappear fully. But instead, they are celebrated into the spirit of the ether, to live on forever.
As the show begins, Faith’s accolades speech is only a faithful memory in her head. We hear her daughter Karma (Melodie Reynolds-Diarra), heartbreakingly, call out to her from inside the house.
Karma has the unimaginable task of selling her mother’s house and moving her into aged care at the age of 64. Here to help her with this task is her daughter, Hope (Tyallah Bulock). She needs to be, as her mother says, ‘the soft one’ so she can be the ‘strong one’.
Strength mixed with softness is indeed what they must have. While they dance around a speaker in the front garden under the magic of shooting stars, the house suffers.
Faith accidentally puts a kettle on the stove to heat up and almost starts a fire. She can no longer drive or look after herself. And there is a stench in the house that just won’t go away.
Yet throughout this play, all three women, despite their various inter-generational conflicts and traumas, are each being called back to their ancestors in different ways. To heal themselves and carry their own destinies across, with their own kind of integrity.
Even a brief appearance by Faith’s drifter son Jet (Nathan Wright) fails to deter the mission needed to care for Faith’s dignity.
Karma is making up for lost time with the daughter she temporarily neglected by inviting her along to join forces with her to take care of Faith. Hope finds solace and a sense of empowerment by wishing to be closer to Nan and formulate her own identity.
She hears the ancient language and is feeling more and more connected to her grandmother’s culture. And by virtue of her own name, finds the single solution to creating peace and harmony.
She tidies up the frays of this whole harrowing experience with unconditional love. She temporarily joins in the game when Faith’s memories reappear. It helps remind Faith of her strengths, of her fight for her lineage and her rights. Of her endurance to keep a language alive, so the women in her culture could still have a voice.
By creating intermittent play-acting ceremonies, she preserves Faith’s dignity. And the spirit of Faith, the memory of her, is archived infinitely, representing the legacies of Gala and Bell Women, past, present and beyond.
The trio of women in this piece are dedicated and bulletproof onstage.
Roxanne McDonald, playing Butchulla/Jagera matriarch Faith Well, is naturally charismatic and endearing, emitting joy and a fiery presence across the stage, despite the underbelly of despair that lingers in her wake. She brings strength and courage to her role and is a treat to watch.
Tyallah Bullock, as Hope, brings a peaceful essence to her role as a lost young girl, trying to navigate her own identity in this world. Her wide-eyed curiosity triggers the gentler moments needed to counter the storms.
Melodie Reynolds-Diarra, playing Karma, is true-to-form in her grumbling of angst. Desperate to find solace in a world and a timeline that are closing in on her by the minute. Gutsy in stature, Reynolds-Diarra has the tenacity to carry her countenance with dignity, bravery and strength throughout this production, with a spirited essence.
Although I enjoyed this show and the empowered spirit behind it, there were moments that were a bit slow. At a runtime of an hour and 40 minutes without an interval, some scenes could have been shortened to streamline the narrative.
Ultimately though, Before I Forget is a heartfelt reminder that our stories, and the people who came before us, are never truly forgotten.
Before I Forget is presented by Melbourne Theatre Company and runs to 28 November at Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, 100 St Kilda Road Southbank Vic 3004.
Tickets: https://tickets.mtc.com.au/production/19789
Website: https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/whats-on/season-2026/before-i-forget
