Review: Precious Cargo

An extraordinary joining up of dots happened when Adelaide-raised actor Barton Williams visited Uig on the Isle of Lewis to film Silent Roar (the opening film of last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival). Chatting with locals Laura and Andrew Cameron-Lewis, who run Lewis-based arts company sruth-mara, Williams heard about composer Andy Yearley, raised in the Outer Hebrides. Yearley, like Williams, was a Vietnam war orphan, relocated to the West during Operation Babylift, the mass evacuation of over 3000 babies and children when the 20-year war ended. Raised on different continents, the two men formed a unique bond because of their surreal, shared experience. 

Williams leads the one-man documentary piece, with voiceovers and photos from five other evacuees. Yearley provides a minimal, evocative score and sruth-mara produced the show, where cardboard boxes (Williams was transported in one as a baby) shapeshift as simple props, in front of projected archive footage. Both Yearley and Williams assimilated to their adopted countries’ cultures, almost like caricatures; Bart loved surfing, Andy learned accordion. The details of Operation Babylift are astonishing, and are woven around anecdotes about racism, accents, identity and genetics. It’s a hugely affecting piece that deserves to be seen by audiences beyond the Fringe, and it’s easy to imagine it doing just that.