Big Name, No Blankets by Andrea James with Anyupa Butcher and Sammy Tjapanangka Butcher celebrates everything good about this land we now call Australia.
Brought from Naarm/Melbourne to Whadjuk Noongar lands by Perth Festival, this First Peoples musical from ILBIJERRI Theatre Company about the groundbreaking Warumpi Band is nothing short of phenomenal. A joyous, uplifting, and spirited account of this family band’s genesis, rise, transformation and enduring legacy, BNNB is an experience that ends too quickly but lingers on in the heart and memory for days afterwards.
First and foremost, BNNB presents some of the most important music made in this country in the last few decades. The Butcher family and Andrea James have carefully selected the show’s key songs to dovetail perfectly with the script to express the highs and lows of the group who made the music. The story arc is full of laughs and love, managing to find just the right balance between the spoken and the unspoken, the light and the dark, and the specifics and the whole within each chapter of the narrative.
The performances from the whole ensemble of actors and the core band make the most of every moment of the hour and a half show. Baykali Ganambarr as Sammy Butcher is a warm and welcoming central storyteller with easy charm and natural humour. Cassandra Williams has a velvety, soulful voice and holds her own as the sole female cast member. Jackson Peele (Neil) seems to be in a constant state of genuine gratitude, while Jack Hickey provides an anchoring beat and Corey Saylor-Brunskill gets to riff with some playful comedy. But I must say without hesitation that Taj Pigram as frontman George Burarrwanga galvanised the entire theatre with his electrifying performance. His voice transformation and fully embodied physicality is marvellous character work that very few could pull off.
Many of the show’s songs are sung in language, so these gifted performers took on learning multiple different languages to lend authenticity to their renditions – and in Pigram’s case, at very short notice. Although the Warumpi Band’s reach didn’t extend as far as 80s and 90s Texas suburbia where I grew up, their influence on my adopted home’s popular and First People’s culture meant that their biggest hits are familiar to my ear. But the most emotionally stirring moment in song for me was “Wayathul”; it spread over me like an anthemic salve that left me very nearly weeping in my seat.
The audience was moved to its feet more than once to share in the show’s abundant joy, but especially at its conclusion. Big Name, No Blankets will continue to move people all around the country through song and storytelling, keeping the Warumpi Band’s legacy alive and well.
CICELY BINFORD
Big Name, No Blankets by ILBIJERRI Theatre Company was presented at The Regal Theatre from 27 Feb – 1 Mar 2025 as part of Perth Festival. For more information on this past event, click here, or visit the ILBIJERRI website here.
