Stolen

In sixty-odd years from around 1910, some quarter of a million Australian Aboriginal children were taken by the state from their families on the flimsiest of excuses – Stolen, as the title of Jane Harrison's play has it. Lighter-skinned children might hope to be adopted by white families, but fully 99% of such adoptions ended in breakdown; darker-skinned children were simply trained up for menial labour. Of the five cast members of Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-Operative's production, now running at London's Tricycle Theatre, three were themselves stolen; actor Pauline Whyman was one of twelve of her parents' fifteen children to be so taken away.

Harrison's play, under Wesley Enoch's direction, keeps the message to the fore without lapsing into polemic or agitprop. The five come onstage, carrying suitcases; they peer around Ric...