The Secret River Neil Armfield Summary

The Secret River Analysis
The director Neil Armfield communicated many themes such as possession, ownership and the different relationships between the men and women throughout his play. The play, The Secret River, was a powerful and well demonstrated play about the different relationships between the White People and the Aboriginal. It was directed by Neil Armfield and produced by the Sydney Theatre Company. Some key themes and issues portrayed in the play was the power struggle between the characters for the land, the conflict between certain characters. Neil Armfield communicated the relationship between the Thornhill family and aboriginal in three key scenes. The scenes that were very successful in communicating this was when Sal was trading with the aboriginal ladies, the influence that Smasher had on William and the massacre scene.
The scene when Sal and the Aboriginal ladies were trading things was very compelling. The Aboriginal ladies approached Sal with caution and frightened Sal but realized they meant no harm. They offered Sal a basket made of wood and Sal gave them sugar in return. Due to the language barrier between them they used actions to communicate. This scene was quite significant because building up to that moment William was quite hostile towards the aboriginals and resorted to
There were quite a number of scenes where you could see that Smasher was convincing William to be harsher with the aboriginals. A very important scene is when Smasher convinced William he needed a gun to defend himself against the aboriginals. At first William was against getting a gun because he didn’t want to resort to violence but the more he saw Smashers side of the story, the more he became convinced he needed a gun. Also with Smashers dogs, William only wanted to get one but he became more paranoid and wanted to get three. The elements of drama portrayed in these scenes