Actors float in murky tale

The audience was plunged into the murky depths of Broome's turbulent multiracial past when The White Divers of Broome opened at the Heath Ledger Theatre last night.

The play follows the exploits of three British Royal Navy divers brought in by the Federal Government in 1912 to crack open the lucrative pearl fishing industry and remove the "taint" of Asian labour at the height of the White Australia policy.

The production, by Black Swan State Theatre Company, exploited the technical capacities of the theatre to send actors floating above the stage as if they were immersed in the phosphorescent tropical waters off the Kimberley coast.

In a big multicultural cast, actors Yutaka Izumihara and Miyuki Lotz spoke in Japanese with accompanying subtitles as a couple trying to escape lives as indentured workers by buying a pearling lugger of their own.

Theatre luminaries John Bell and Anna Volska of Bell Shakespeare flew in from Sydney to see the play, written by their daughter Hilary Bell.