Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Sep 18 – 27, 2025
Playwrights: Simon Thomson, Emma Wright
Director: Claudia Elbourne
Cast: Hamish Alexander, Claudia Elbourne, Karrine Kanaan, Alyssa Peters, Larissa Turton, Leon Walshe, Michael Yore
Images by Karla Elbourne

Theatre review
We follow four teenagers at an all-girls high school as their awakening sexualities threaten to steer them into dangerous waters. She Threaded Dangerously, by Simon Thomson and Emma Wright, examines the bold and unruly libidos of youth in a world that has never quite known how to hold them. Though natural and healthy, such desires are too often suppressed, and that stifling can lead to tragic consequence.

The play may at moments feel too obvious with its message, at others frustratingly vague, yet its courage in grappling with taboo subjects, including sexual abuse, is admirable. Under Claudia Elbourne’s direction, the piece pulses with vibrancy, sustaining our attention even as its restless, youthful exuberance occasionally edges toward a grating excess.

Laila McCarthy’s set design shapes the stage with sensitivity, delineating spaces that allow us to imagine the many locations of the narrative, accented by understated details that resonate with quiet effectiveness. Luna Ng’s lighting brings a striking theatricality, conjuring a remarkable range of visual textures that enrich the eye at every turn. Alexander Lee-Rekers’ sound design often sits too far in the background, but when required, it enters effortlessly to heighten the drama.

Claudia Elbourne, Karrine Kanaan, Alyssa Peters, and Larissa Turton breathe vivid life into the circle of friends at the play’s heart, tracing with playful candour the restless currents of adolescent desire. Each performer stands assured in her own presence, yet together they weave a portrait of friendship that feels generous and harmonious. Around them, Hamish Alexander, Leon Walshe, and Michael Yore embody the contradictions of conventional masculinity, shifting between its harsher veneers and the fragile emotions so often concealed beneath bravado.

As a society, we often grow overprotective of girls, guarding their safety with puritanical notions that restrict freedom, stunt growth, and prolong immaturity. True development into womanhood requires the cultivation of confidence, a process that begins with the rejection of shame, particularly in relation to how we embrace ourselves as sexual beings. She Threaded Dangerously reminds us that what matters most is how we empower the young to voice their feelings—openly, fearlessly, and free from stigma or guilt—for it is through such articulation, as distinct from secrecy, that healthy growth truly flourishes.

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