Review: My Fair Lady (Sydney Opera House)

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Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Sep 10 – Oct 31, 2026
Book & Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner
Music: Frederick Loewe
Director: Karen Johnson Mortimer
Cast: Freddy Hellier, Reg Livermore, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Claire Lyon, Robyn Nevin, Nathaniel Parker, David Whitney, Anne Wood
Images by Jeff Busby

Theatre review
What remains timeless about Eliza Doolittle’s story is how readily young women, even today, continue to be seduced by promises of a more elevated existence, if only they surrender enough of themselves to become the woman patriarchy prefers. She believes that by shedding her old habits and bending herself into the shape demanded by a hegemonic society, fulfilment and success will naturally follow. It is a fantasy that has endured remarkably well.

In many ways, this decades old My Fair Lady is a story about the glass ceiling. No matter how obediently a woman submits to patriarchal expectations, she is never permitted to arrive at a place of genuine equality or satisfaction. Karen Johnson Mortimer’s 2016 production foregrounds this reality, allowing us to feel the accumulating disappointments Eliza endures after voluntarily subjecting herself to relentless humiliation and objectification. From today’s vantage point, we recognise the truth of it: even if self-possession is possible within prevailing paradigms, submission to what others want rarely pays adequate dividends.

Claire Lyon is instrumental in making this encounter with a familiar story feel unexpectedly fresh. She gives Eliza a spine of steel without ever betraying the character as written, revealing a woman whose resilience grows alongside her refinement. Lyon’s singing and physicality are impeccable, both technically and artistically, but it is her portrayal of a woman gradually acquiring wisdom rather than polish that proves most compelling.

Nathaniel Parker has the thankless task of playing Professor Henry Higgins, a character who has only become more objectionable with the passing decades. Fortunately, Parker possesses an innate tenderness that makes Higgins just charismatic enough for us to understand, however reluctantly, why Eliza might be drawn into his orbit.

The production design is highly accomplished, if occasionally too reverential in its traditionalism. The absence of one iconic costume from the 1964 film is a disappointing omission, but Cecil Beaton’s original millinery designs and John Isaacs’ exquisite wig work lend the production an undeniable elegance and visual sophistication.

Most of us learn the hard way that patriarchy will disappoint us, no matter how completely we capitulate to its demands. Eliza may have been poor at the story’s outset, but she was never truly miserable; it is only after embarking on her transformation into a so called lady that unhappiness takes hold. She undoubtedly gains education, confidence and social mobility through Higgins’ tutelage, but her greatest reward is an enlightenment altogether different from the one she was promised. The real transformation is not in becoming a lady, but recognising the cost of trying to become someone else’s ideal.

www.myfairladythemusical.com.au

Review: Dixon & Daughters (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Sep 18 – Oct 3, 2026
Playwright: Deborah Bruce
Director: Kim Hardwick
Cast: Vanessa Downing, Rylea Eilis, Romney Hamilton, Linda Nicholls-Gidley, Danette Potgieter, Sarah Jane Starr
Images by Campbell Parsons

Theatre review
Mary has just been released from prison, and although her daughters and granddaughter are trying to restore some sense of normality, this is a household built on fractures that refuse to stay buried. Deborah Bruce’s Dixon & Daughters takes longer than necessary to arrive at its emotional centre, but once its central wound is exposed, there is no questioning the play’s urgency. Its wit is sharp and often disarming, yet it is the emotional weight of its drama that ultimately leaves the deepest impression.

Kim Hardwick’s direction is steeped in convincing naturalism. She creates a world of such lived-in authenticity that every exchange feels immediate and every relationship fully inhabited, drawing the audience into the family’s intimate dynamics before revealing the devastating force of what lies beneath. The realism never feels ornamental; it is precisely what gives the story its devastating emotional impact.

Vanessa Downing is formidable as Mary, refusing to soften the character’s abrasiveness or blunt cruelty. It is an unsparing performance that allows us to confront both the harm Mary has inflicted and the remorse she struggles to articulate. Sarah Jane Starr is equally compelling as Briana, bringing razor-sharp acerbity and infectious vitality to a woman shaped by trauma yet fiercely committed to breaking its cycle. Romney Hamilton’s Julie is quietly heartbreaking from the outset, before delivering the production’s most emotionally shattering moments when the drama reaches its fullest intensity. Linda Nicholls-Gidley lends Bernie a stoic resilience that evokes the British “keep calm and carry on” ethos, while always revealing the grief simmering beneath her composure. As the youngest generation, Danette Potgieter and Rylea Eilis bring Ella and Leigh an appealing blend of youthful innocence and surprising emotional intelligence.

Mia MacCormick’s set is equally deserving of praise. Her two-level design effortlessly accommodates the play’s shifting locations within Mary’s home, while vividly capturing the cramped material reality of England’s working class. It is an economical design rich with social detail, telling its own story about the conditions in which this family has endured.

Across three generations of women, Dixon & Daughters traces the enduring consequences of domestic violence. The patriarch is the obvious perpetrator, but Bruce is interested in something more insidious: the web of institutions, expectations and silences that enable abuse to persist and perpetrators to evade accountability. It is easy to condemn Mary for her silence and inaction. The play asks us to confront the more uncomfortable truth that her choices were shaped by a system designed to reward obedience and punish resistance under white patriarchy. To hold Mary solely responsible is to imagine, borrowing Audre Lorde’s famous formulation, that the master’s house can be dismantled with the master’s tools. Justice lies not in isolating one woman’s failure, but in exposing the structure that made it possible in the first place, and then committing to build a better replacement.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.tinydogproductions.com.au

Review: How My Light Is Spent (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Sep 11 – 26, 2026
Playwright: Alan Harris
Director: Braiden Toko
Cast: Jane Angharad, Renée Billing, Pita Lolohea, Kira McLennan, James Smithers
Images by Robert Catto

Theatre review
Jimmy is 34 and living back at home after the collapse of his marriage, having lost both his wife and daughter. He has found work at a drive-through doughnut shop, but his only genuine source of comfort is a weekly call with a phone sex operator named Kitty. Jimmy rarely speaks about his emotional turmoil, yet it is immediately apparent that he is failing to cope. As parts of his body begin to disappear from sight, Alan Harris offers a poignant allegory for a man slowly fading into oblivion.

How My Light is Spent may find Jimmy at the lowest point of his life, but rather than wallow in despair, it delights in the strange and the whimsical. Its humour is graceful and quietly inventive, maintaining an air of lightness throughout without sacrificing emotional substance. By the time it reaches its conclusion, the play has arrived somewhere unexpectedly moving, giving its eccentricity genuine purpose.

Braiden Toko’s direction wholeheartedly embraces the play’s eccentric spirit while exercising remarkable restraint. Every quirky flourish is handled with a light touch, ensuring the production never feels self-conscious or eager to charm. There is a confidence in its gentleness that becomes deeply captivating, making it a pleasure to watch a work that never insists upon its own cleverness.

That same sophistication extends to the visual design. James Smithers’ set is striking in its remarkably polished execution of simple ideas, creating a world that feels playful without becoming overly decorative. Clare Sheridan’s lighting and Anthony MacDermott’s score are similarly understated, bringing warmth and sensuality with precision and sensitivity. Together they create a theatrical language that is quietly magical, without having to tip into excess.

Smithers also delivers a beautifully judged performance as Jimmy, bringing an essential innocence that makes the character immediately sympathetic. His greatest strength lies in his lightness of touch; by refusing to foreground Jimmy’s suffering, he allows the pain to emerge naturally and all the more powerfully. Jane Angharad gives Kitty an affecting realism, sidestepping the familiar clichés associated with sex workers to create someone grounded, compassionate and entirely believable. Supporting performances from Renée Billing, Pita Lolohea and Kira McLennan provide the production with much of its buoyancy, the trio bringing charisma and creativity, while sustaining the show’s distinctive sense of style.

The beauty of whimsy is its ability to make familiar truths feel newly discovered. By embracing unpredictability, it pushes language, perspective and convention into unexpected places, inviting us to see ordinary experiences through different lenses. Human beings possess boundless imagination, yet so much of adult life demands rigidity, routine and predictability. When confronted with life’s challenges, we often find ourselves repeating the same futile patterns, endlessly beating dead horses. In valuing whimsy, we may find a kind of salvation, beginning with the courage to think, feel and imagine differently.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.secrethouse.com.au

Review: Housework (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Sep 5 – Oct 17, 2026
Playwright: Emily Steel
Director: Shannon Rush
Cast: Laurence Boxhall, Franca Lafosse, Indira Naidoo, Johnny Nasser, Emily Taheny, Susie Youssef
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
Emily Steel’s Housework tells the story of the Australian federal government, or more precisely, the messy machinery that keeps our democracy running. Staffers of every rank, members of parliament, frontbench ministers and even the occupant of the nation’s highest office populate its world. Each understands the gravity of their responsibilities and the far-reaching consequences of their decisions, yet none manages to navigate the system with complete dignity or unimpeachable integrity.

Some argue that the system is broken; others contend it was always built to accommodate corruption. Housework is less interested in resolving that debate than in exposing just how pervasive the compromises and backroom dealings have become. Like the proverbial sausage, the business of government is something we would rather not watch being made.

Steel’s play is at its most compelling when it invites us to sit with uncomfortable ethical ambiguities. The plot itself is admittedly predictable, but the questions it raises are anything but simple. Its structure can feel overly straightforward, and its comedy occasionally too restrained, yet Shannon Rush’s direction ensures the production never loses momentum. The pacing is buoyant, the energy infectious, and we remain eager to discover what fresh moral compromise awaits around each corner.

Emily Taheny anchors the production with admirable conviction and clarity as chief of staff Anna, finding a balance between farce and emotional credibility that gives the play its centre of gravity. Susie Youssef brings impeccable comic timing to Ruth, although the character could benefit from greater psychological accuracy. Franca Lafosse is thoroughly enjoyable as the relentlessly upbeat junior staffer Kelly, even if the writing saddles her with an implausible, and irritating, level of naivety. Johnny Nasser is outstanding as Paul, capturing the character’s constant oscillation between decency and opportunism with remarkable nuance.

Ailsa Paterson’s set convincingly evokes the imposing architecture of Australia’s colonial-era government institutions, embodying both their grandeur and their emotional coldness. It is an apt visual metaphor for the bureaucratic culture the play interrogates. At times, however, the performance space feels too expansive for scenes set in supposedly clandestine rooms, and several lengthy exits tip into unintended comedy.

Housework excels at illuminating the flaws embedded within our political system and, by extension, the ways those flaws ripple into everyday Australian life. It offers no easy remedies, nor does it pretend reform is simple. Instead, it insists that honest scrutiny is a necessary first step. Democracy, the play suggests, is sustained not by believing our institutions are clean, but by refusing to look away when they are not.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au | www.statetheatrecompany.com.au

Review: Mum Club (Griffin Theatre Co)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Aug 22 – Sep 20, 2026
Playwright: Jorjia Gillis
Director: Ian Michael
Cast: Alex Malone, Megan Wilding, Ruby Teys, Stephanie Somerville, Zarif
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
Having relocated from the west coast to the east, Sadie finds herself adrift in Sydney’s inner west, tethered to a newborn whose refusal to sleep renders the infant considerably more than merely demanding. Bereft of her customary support networks, she seeks refuge in a local mothers’ group, only to discover that the ways of white people offer little solace to an Aboriginal woman navigating alien terrain. In Mum Club, Jorjia Gillis reframes the experience of colonisation through the intimate lens of young motherhood, contrasting the slow, precarious work of genuine human connection with the frictionless, transactional relationships so readily furnished by a capitalist social order.

There is, unquestionably, a formidable moral architecture underpinning Gillis’s work. Yet the play too often sacrifices its emotional integrity in pursuit of comedy, deploying humour with a conspicuous straining for effect rather than permitting the story’s inherent pathos to generate its own organic levity. The result is a tone that feels laboured and blunt, undercutting the subtlety of the material. Ian Michael’s direction, while never losing sight of the production’s urgent raison d’être, similarly overinvests in comic business that seldom finds its mark, leaving sequences that should sparkle with wit feeling instead effortful and flat.

It falls to Stephanie Somerville, in the central role, to anchor the production in something approaching authenticity. Fortunately, she is granted several passages of genuine gravity, and in these moments she is transcendent. When the script allows her to set aside the artifice of sitcom rhythms, Somerville breathes vivid life into Sadie’s predicament, forging an immediate and profound connection with the audience. We recognise, through her finely calibrated performance, the particular weight of being Aboriginal in an unfamiliar metropolis, and the crushing isolation of new motherhood in the absence of adequate familial or institutional support. The supporting ensemble commits itself with evident devotion – there is no doubting their diligence – but they are ultimately constrained by writing that affords them insufficient dimensionality to truly distinguish themselves.

On the design front, Cris Baldwin’s production work succeeds in conjuring an expansive spatial quality, allowing the mind’s eye to roam comfortably across the play’s various locales without the encumbrance of literalism. Verity Hampson’s lighting proves equally adept, distinguishing between the production’s naturalistic settings with tonal precision while luxuriating in moments of heightened theatricality. Particularly noteworthy is Brendon Boney’s score, which repeatedly salvages scenes where the text falters, furnishing the production with a dramatic urgency that the writing itself too often withholds. In a narrative freighted with anguish and righteous anger, Boney’s music emerges as perhaps the most reliable instrument for conveying intensity.

In Mum Club, we are reminded that meaningful connections are rarely forged overnight, and that the friendships born of convenience are often the least enduring. Genuine community demands time, patience and emotional investment; only through that sustained commitment can we build a life that feels truly meaningful. The play ultimately suggests that no one flourishes in isolation, and that our strongest selves are made possible by the strength of those who stand beside us.

www.griffintheatre.com.au

Review: Forget Me, Please (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Sep 1 – 11, 2026
Playwright: Sophie Davis
Director: Jessica DiCosta
Cast: Kala Gare, Shannen Alyce Quan
Images by Lucy Parakhina

Theatre review
Andrea and Sasha are bound by a love that is as fervent as it is fraught, yet their union remains inescapably constrained by Andrea’s deteriorating mental health; an affliction that compels her toward radical, perhaps irreversible, measures in pursuit of restoration. Forget Me, Please, Sophie Davis’ ambitious if uneven work, presents itself simultaneously as an intimate romance between two women and as a work of science fiction with grand designs that it ultimately falls short of fully realising.

What elevates the material beyond its narrative limitations is Jessica DiCosta’s direction, which is marked by a palpable sensitivity to the fragile dynamics of a troubled romantic entanglement. DiCosta renders every subtle inflection of this demanding relationship with credibility, while her sustained commitment to dramatic intensity transforms what might otherwise have been a pedestrian storyline into something more compelling. Complementing this visual and emotional texture is the score by Jessica Meier and Alex Meier, whose music accomplishes the crucial work of atmospheric modulation, ensuring the production never lapses into monotony and frequently deepening the sensual undercurrents that animate this queer love story.

At the heart of the piece are Kala Gare and Shannen Alyce Quan, whose onstage partnership proves as formidable as it is finely calibrated. Each performer operates with admirable restraint, threading nuance through every scene, yet both locate precisely the right moments to unleash a raw, affecting intensity. It is, above all, the calibre of their acting that renders the production memorable. They captivate individually, but it is the unambiguous chemistry they have cultivated together that persuades us to invest in the turbulent vicissitudes of their characters’ complex bond.

Sasha harbours the understandable hope that love alone might mend Andrea’s fractured psyche, yet she arrives, as so many before have, at the more sobering truth: however majestic or all-consuming love may feel, it remains no panacea for wounded souls. Andrea must undertake a deeply personal journey of reckoning and recovery, one for which Sasha, despite her devotion, cannot be a companion.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au

Review: Singapore Spotlight (Sydney Fringe Festival)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Sep 1 – 5, 2026

The Happier Place
Creator and performer: Jo Tan

Pretty Ugly
Creator and performer: Theo Chen

Theatre review
In The Happier Place, creator-performer Jo Tan inhabits Val, a radio DJ broadcasting from some distant, post-catastrophic future where the populace lives in perpetual dread of “dematerialisation.” On air, Val erupts into hysterical laughter and dispenses an endless torrent of absurdist humour, as though the act of denial itself were the last available bulwark against annihilation. The performance raises an unsettling proposition: that the fortitude required to confront unrelenting horror may be a virtue more honoured in the abstract than actually possessed. Through this lens, Tan’s work interrogates an array of pressing social concerns, including the climate crisis, censorship, mental health, each rendered with the gravity they merit.

Pretty Ugly, by contrast, offers creator Theo Chen centre stage, where he interpolates standards from the musical theatre canon with meditations on romantic failure and the labyrinthine agonies of self-image. The piece traces the insidious alchemy by which feeling unloved transmutes into the conviction of being unlovable; Chen’s pursuit of catharsis through performance proves as intellectually rigorous as it is emotionally disarming. His exploration of queerness is distinctly situated: that of a Gen Z Singaporean equipped with an expansive, theoretically informed understanding of gender and sexuality, yet nevertheless navigating a society whose conservatism remains stubbornly, even aggressively, queerphobic.

As performers, Tan and Chen could scarcely be more dissimilar. Tan is relentless, muscular, tightly bound to the architecture of her script; Chen is elegiac, meandering, orbiting a loosely sketched narrative rather than adhering to one. Yet what unites them, beyond the sheer magnetism of their respective presences, is an unwavering fidelity to honesty. Whether their material is invented or confessional, naturalistic or operatically heightened, both works seem to arrive at an identical terminus: that zone of consciousness where evasion is no longer tenable, and where the only remaining option is to look, however unbearable the sight.

www.singaporespotlight.com

Review: How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Hayes Theatre)

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Venue: Hayes Theatre Co (Potts Point NSW), Aug 28 – Sep 27, 2026
Book: Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, Willie Gilbert
Music and Lyrics: Frank Loesser
Director: Cameron Mitchell
Cast: Simon Burke, Kaeng Chan, Taye Grant, Katie Green, Kye Hall, Wayne Scott Kermond, Georgia Laga’aia, Lucy Lalor, Max Macdonald, Noni McCallum, Kristina McNamara, Madeline Pratt, Jake Speer, Stacey Thomsett, Zachary Webster
Images by John McRae

Theatre review
A window washer stumbles upon a manual that promises to teach any man how to game the system and ascend the corporate hierarchy without the burden of genuine effort. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying may be well into its seventh decade, yet its dissection of capitalism (particularly its hollow mythology of merit and fairness) remains disquietingly pertinent.

What has not weathered the years, however, is its treatment of women: every female character is rendered as woefully subservient, stripped of agency, and reduced to cardboard cut-outs wholly objectified through the lens of 1950s masculinity. It is regrettable that director and choreographer Cameron Mitchell makes no discernible attempt to restore dignity to these roles; nevertheless, the tautness and precision of his staging deliver a production that is, for all its antiquated sensibilities, undeniably and irresistibly enjoyable. The vigour and momentum of the direction prove thoroughly engaging, as does the overall sheen of the presentation – an accomplishment owed in no small measure to its design team.

Dominic Foffani’s set achieves striking stylistic fidelity, offering a grand and officious vision of the era’s aspirational workplaces. Christine Mutton’s costumes delight with their judiciously balanced and vibrant palette, each garment meticulously tailored to present every performer at their most flattering. Peter Rubie’s lighting is finely attuned to the production’s comedic register, yet seizes every opportunity to conjure moments of genuine beauty whenever the score drifts into more poetic territory.

Jake Speer proves a leading man of considerable precision and detail, bringing formidable technical skill and commanding self-assurance to the role of Finch. As his romantic interest Rosemary, Georgia Laga’aia sings with exquisite beauty, and is fortunately granted several substantial musical numbers that showcase her considerable vocal gifts, even if the character herself remains stubbornly uninspiring. The ensemble is immensely likeable, and the production lingers in the memory for its many sequences in which the company’s infectious dynamism and polished cohesion testify to an admirable dedication in the rehearsal room. Kim Gilbert’s musical direction is a thorough pleasure, brimming with jaunty rhythms that sustain the audience’s delight throughout.

Much of what How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying asserts still rings true. Deceit and obfuscation remain entrenched in the structures that govern our social and economic existence; yet while the narrative exposes this reality with clarity, it appears to advocate not for resistance or reform, but for the cynical strategy of aligning oneself with those who wield power unscrupulously. More than seventy years have elapsed since Shepherd Mead’s original novel, and the corrosive effects of the corruption he described have not merely persisted—they have metastasised, inflicting ever greater harm upon the lives of ordinary people.

www.hayestheatre.com.au | www.lpdprod.com

Review: The Shark Is Broken (Foundry Theatre)

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Venue: Foundry Theatre (Pyrmont NSW), Aug 28 – Oct 11, 2026
Playwrights: Joseph Nixon, Ian Shaw
Director: Luke Joslin
Cast: Robin Goldsworthy, Anthony Gooley, Tom Stokes
Images by David Hooley

Theatre review
Protracted technical failures on the set of a Hollywood blockbuster have a curious way of forging intimacy among those marooned by circumstance. Such was the predicament in 1975 on the set of Jaws, where three principal actors found themselves with an abundance of time and a poverty of purpose. In The Shark is Broken, by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon, we observe these men—united by profession yet scarcely by disclosure—navigate the liminal space between collegiality and confession.

Directed by Luke Joslin, the production captures the texture of masculine camaraderie with undeniable authenticity; the performers bristle, bond, and deflect with the choreography of men who have learned that proximity need not entail revelation. Yet the play remains curiously surface-bound: its characters traffic in the signifiers of vulnerability without ever submitting to its discomfort. One admires the execution while wondering for whom, precisely, this exercise in emotional restraint is intended.

The cast is uniformly superb. Robin Goldsworthy brings an irrepressible, mercurial energy to Richard Dreyfuss, his vivacity keeping the proceedings buoyant even as the narrative threatens to list. Anthony Gooley imbues Robert Shaw with a brooding, caustic grandeur—convincingly sodden one moment, debonair the next, capturing the paradox of the ruined aesthete. Tom Stokes is a dead ringer for Roy Scheider, his impeccable timing lending the storytelling an organic, unforced rhythm.

The design elements are equally accomplished. James Browne’s set, augmented by Cameron Smith’s video projections, achieves a striking majesty while never permitting us to forget that these men are, both literally and figuratively, at sea. Jasmine Rizk’s lighting and Sean Peter’s sound design offer subtle but essential flourishes, conjuring theatricality from an environment that is simultaneously artificial and elemental.

The central irony of the piece—and perhaps its most trenchant observation—is that these men had no faith their film would become anything more than a troubled production. They did not relish their position; they did not apprehend the extraordinary privilege of their circumstance. Instead, they nursed petty grievances and private miseries, too consumed by their own discontent to recognize the historical moment unfolding around them. The play seems to ask whether lasting legacies are forged through conscious intention or merely accrue, unbidden, to those too preoccupied to notice. It is a sobering meditation on the cost of myopia—though one wishes the work itself were less reluctant to look beneath the surface it so reticently surveys.

www.sharkisbroken.com.au

Review: Heathers (Roslyn Packer Theatre)

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Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney NSW), Sep 1 – 19, 2026
Book, Music & Lyrics: Kevin Murphy, Laurence O’Keefe (based on the film written by Daniel Waters)
Director: Andy Fickman
Cast: Conor Beaumont, Emma Caporaso, David Cuny, Zoe Gertz, Calista Nelmes, Mel O’Brien, Abigail Sharp, Amélia Rojas, Nic Van Lits
Images by Cameron Grant

Theatre review
Veronica’s alliance with the school bullies proceeds from that timeworn logic: if you cannot defeat them, join them. Heathers, drawn from the 1988 cult film, is a satire of social Darwinism in which human decency has become a forgotten currency. To navigate the minefield of high school, its teenagers abandon morality entirely, embracing instead the brutal metrics of popularity and hierarchy—a dynamic that now reads as an early parable of neoliberal self-interest.

Andy Fickman’s direction is exuberantly playful, rich with a camp sensibility that proves genuinely delightful. Yet the dramatic tension never fully tightens; despite visibly escalating stakes, the production struggles to secure our emotional investment as the narrative unfolds.

The score is broadly enjoyable, though sound engineering too often lacks vibrancy—a noticeable shortcoming. The production, however, boasts considerable compensations. Gary Lloyd’s choreography is consistently crisp and wittily executed, while Ben Cracknell’s lighting design is inventive and relentlessly dynamic.

Leading the cast, Emma Caporaso proves highly impressive, commanding attention through both vocal precision and sharp comic timing. Her innate likeability as Veronica becomes crucial: she sustains our engagement with the narrative’s moral weight even as the production’s energy flags, particularly in its latter half.

Conor Beaumont’s J.D., by contrast, leans too far toward innocence, lacking the cunning and menace the role requires to cohere as a genuine threat. A deficit of charisma compounds the problem. Calista Nelmes delivers plenty of swagger as the head Heather, though she never quite convinces as an actual teenager. Particularly noteworthy are Nic Van Lits and David Cuny as the obnoxious jocks Kurt and Ram; their comic synchronisation is faultless, and their every appearance injects welcome energy into the proceedings.

Heathers ultimately delivers a dark lesson: we live in an era where defeating our enemies may require becoming what we most despise. Moral clarity would insist on doing only what is right; yet the musical suggests that some battles can only be won by speaking the language of power and brutality—the only dialect, it seems, that our adversaries understand.

www.heathersthemusical.com