Talking at Windmills

What do we modern Americans know about our country's original inhabitants? All in all, not much, really — Native Americans seem to exist in a nebulous realm of half-understanding for most of us. There's perhaps an analogous situation half a world away: It pertains to Australians and the Aboriginals among them. Long before Britain began colonizing the Australian mainland in the eighteenth century, Aboriginals were indigenous to this vast territory. David Milroy's play Windmill Baby, which has already been hailed as an Australian classic in its homeland, offers a glimpse into this little-known (to Americans, anyway) world of the Aboriginal experience Down Under. Maymay is an elderly Aboriginal woman who returns to the pastoral cattle station she worked on as a domestic 50 years ago. Her vivid memories carry a story of love, violence and sudden ruin, told within the larger historical context of the Aboriginal people in servitude to white Australians. Upstream Theater Company presents Windmill Baby at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and at 7 p.m. Sunday (April 25 through May 10) at the Kranzberg Arts Center (501 North Grand Boulevard; 314-863-4999 or www.upstreamtheater.org); there is a 3 p.m. matinee on Sunday, May 11. Tickets are $20 to $30.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Sun., May 11, 3 p.m. Starts: April 25. Continues through May 4, 2014