[Theatre and Physical Theatre/Contemporary ~ NSW, SA Premiere]

The End of Winter
The Gallery at the Courtyard of Curiosities, Thu 29 Feb, 2024

Compared to many places in the world Australian winters are pretty pathetic. If you’re a fan of winter and come from the northern climes as Jane Phegan does, then complaining about Australian winters is quite justified – not because they are too cold but because they are not cold enough!

The Gallery is a compact venue that is part of the charming Migration Museum hub. It’s an ideal venue for a show like this. It’s an intimate venue with excellent acoustics. The End of Winter is billed as a performance essay. It’s a curious piece that on the one hand extols the virtues of cold weather, while at the same time bemoaning the fact that planet Earth may be on the verge of losing the season of winter altogether. Will future generations even get to experience what we now know as winters? Can scientists save us from ourselves?

As someone who has in recent times become more enamoured of cooler weather I enjoyed the references to the beauty of snow and the majesty of Antarctica. But we learn that the worlds’ glaciers are shrinking, and that many European skiing resorts are now nothing more than ghost towns.

There’s a lot of information here that helps to explain why so many environmental scientists are suffering from depression. It’s hard to remain optimistic in this space. While not exactly uplifting it wasn’t all doom and gloom either. It really was quite packed full of interesting facts about Antarctic explorers, the sub-Antarctic islands of NZ, and the ‘language of winter.’

If this was a lecture as part of a course of study I’d be rapt. As a performance piece in an arts festival where entertainment is a core expectation it comes up a little short.