Tag Archives: play

Review: Strong Is The New Pretty (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Oct 22 – Dec 12, 2026
Playwright: Suzie Miller
Director: Sarah Giles
Cast: Lucy Bell, Edyll, Amy Hack, Amy Ingram, Amber McMahon, Tara Morice, Nyasha Ogden, Contessa Treffone
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
Established in 2017, a full century after the first women’s matches were documented in Western Australia, the AFLW arrived after a protracted delay. While its male counterpart flourished and consolidated its cultural dominance over the decades, it was not until recently that women’s football was afforded serious institutional legitimacy. The precipitating events that led to the league’s foundation are dramatised in Suzie Miller’s Strong is the New Pretty. Though Miller’s fictionalised account of these true events occasionally veers into predictable, overly earnest territory, its passion for the subject matter is both undeniable and admirable.

The production’s true triumph lies in the highly kinetic and imaginative direction of Sarah Giles. Collaborating with movement director Kelley Abbey, Giles constructs a theatrical landscape so visually and energetically arresting that the audience is utterly captivated, irrespective of their interest in the sporting arena. This stage magic is further elevated by Paul Jackson’s lighting design, which lends a striking vividness to the imagery being presented. Similarly, Craig Wilkinson’s video projections serve as a clever narrative anchor, literally charting key names and milestone events to keep the plot trajectory clear. The sonic landscape, comprising Clemence Williams’ composition and Brady Watkin’s sound design is judiciously deployed to rouse emotional investment and maintain a palpable sense of urgency for a story that is irrefutably important.

The ensemble cast is visibly invested in this history, and their onstage cohesion is a pleasure to witness. Lucy Bell, Amber McMahon, and Tara Morice ground the production as key figures in the historical moment that we revisit, with each actor imbuing their role with unassailable sincerity.

Ultimately, Strong is the New Pretty is a literal crusade for gender equality, yet its conclusion offers a more nuanced critique: true progress for marginalised genders is not achieved by merely replicating damaging, pre-existing systems. While substituting the old patriarchy with a matriarchy is a tempting conceptual framework, the play suggests that dismantling a pre-existing hierarchy just to replace with another, would be a miscalculation. Instead, it advocates for a network of self-possessed, self-motivated matriarchs, a model of multiplicity rather than hegemony, as the path that will truly serve us. Equality, in this sense, is not simply a matter of allowing women to occupy positions of power, but of rethinking the structures through which power itself is exercised.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: Never The Sinner (Qtopia)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Oct 9 – 24, 2026
Playwright: John Logan
Director: Kurtis Laing
Cast: Jack Bridges, Laila Chesterman, Josh Hammond, Frey Kenay, Mark Langham, Harlee Timms, Alex Travers
Images by Jack Shep

Theatre review
In 1924, in Chicago, teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were apprehended for the kidnapping and murder of an acquaintance. The apparent pointlessness of the crime, seemingly committed for little more than sport, continues to baffle and disturb. Playwright John Logan delves into the case in Never the Sinner, inviting us to examine it from two perspectives, that of the historical moment and that of the present day. The young men’s fascination with Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch serves as a linchpin in Logan’s account, offering a framework through which to understand their actions. It also lends itself to a contemporary reading of the pair as privileged white men, whose wealth and social standing may have fostered a sense of impunity, encouraging them to act without regard for the consequences.

Logan’s meticulous examination of the court case is admirable, revealing an exemplary depth of research and thought. Yet, despite its intellectual ambitions, the play never quite engages the audience on either an emotional or an analytical level. Fortunately, director Kurtis Laing transforms the material into a viscerally compelling piece of theatre. Even if we remain largely indifferent to the characters themselves and their eventual fates, the production’s sheer theatricality, charged with power and magnetism, holds our attention throughout.

Leopold and Loeb were famously lovers, and actors Jack Bridges and Josh Hammond establish a convincing, libidinous chemistry between them. Bridges brings a studied deliberateness to Leopold, while Hammond makes a memorable impression as the more impulsive Loeb. Their contrasting performances create a compelling dynamic, one that is also dramaturgically apt, reflecting the differences in temperament that distinguish the two men. Both actors are persuasive in their respective roles, lending the production a vitality that compensates for the writing’s occasional lack of dramatic momentum.

The supporting cast is equally commendable, with each performer bringing precision and confidence to the ensemble. Collectively, they contribute to a staging whose polish and effectiveness are genuinely surprising. Laila Chesterman, who also appears in the ensemble, demonstrates a keen eye as costume designer, capturing the period with convincing accuracy while introducing touches of flamboyance that lend the production a heightened theatricality. Matthew Phillips likewise takes on dual responsibilities, overseeing both lighting and sound design, and makes a substantial contribution to the atmosphere through each discipline. His lighting has a carefully calibrated sensuality, reinforcing the sexual undercurrents of this true-crime narrative, although the shadows occasionally fall too heavily across the actors’ faces, obscuring some of their expressive work. The sound design is impressively dramatic, but its repeated use of certain atmospheric textures can become monotonous, with repetition undermining the effect it otherwise creates.

In an era dominated by the rhetoric of the manosphere, revisiting Leopold and Loeb offers a timely opportunity to consider how they misappropriated Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch, interpreting it as a justification for dominance over others. Today’s self-proclaimed alpha males similarly preach contempt for weakness, treating empathy and accountability as signs of inferiority. Yet genuine strength lies not in the subjugation of others but in the mastery of oneself. The pursuit of dominance, the anxieties of status and the impulse towards cruelty are more often compensatory expressions of insecurity and emotional immaturity than evidence of superiority. The misappropriated ideal of the superman thus becomes a costume worn by men such as Leopold and Loeb, and their contemporary counterparts: men who have failed to master themselves but imagine they have somehow transcended everyone else.

www.qtopiasydney.com.au | www.instagram.com/goodtimetheatrics

Review: Tartuffe (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Oct 2 – 17, 2026
Playwright: Phillip James Rouse (after Molière)
Director: Phillip James Rouse
Cast: Annie Byron, Deborah Galanos, Julian Garner, Lucy Miller, Tamara Lee Bailey, Dominique Purdue, Travis Howard, Will Thomas
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
The most significant difference between Phillip James Rouse’s adaptation and Molière’s Tartuffe is the extent to which the former secularises the story of a religious impostor. Recasting the play for a contemporary audience without the historical baggage of Christianity is an understandable strategy, particularly in an age populated by grifters who exploit our willingness to believe in false gods of various kinds. Yet Rouse’s adaptation also demonstrates how difficult it is to replicate the particular satisfaction of Molière’s original, whose success rested in no small part on its incisive critique of the Church and religious hypocrisy. There is something especially gratifying about exposing the failings of an institution that claims moral authority, and Rouse’s largely secular retelling sacrifices some of that critical potency in the process.

Rouse’s direction is animated by a commitment to comic exuberance, and the production is undeniably energetic and boisterous, with an unmistakable vein of camp running throughout. Not every member of the cast, however, manages to sustain this heightened comic register with sufficient consistency. Fortunately, Julian Garner strikes precisely the right tone in the title role, delivering a delicious combination of scheming opportunism and self-serving delusion. He brings both presence and charisma to Tartuffe, making the character’s duplicity as entertaining as it is exasperating. Deborah Galanos is equally noteworthy as Orgonelle, a female reimagining of Orgon, imbuing the role with a flamboyance and emotional intensity that sit comfortably within the absurdist, grotesque sensibility of Rouse’s direction.

The stage is populated with multicoloured balloons which, whatever their intended symbolism, provide a measure of visual engagement. Anna Gardiner’s costumes combine elements of the classical European aesthetic of Molière’s period with a more contemporary sensibility, while Richard Whitehouse’s lighting remains largely at full intensity, sustaining the production’s relentlessly heightened comic energy. Matty James’s sound design is effective during the play’s more sinister passages, but at other times seems to work against the actors’ attempts to generate laughter. The resulting incongruity has a certain curiosity value, although it ultimately proves more distracting than illuminating.

If religion no longer commands the same hold over us that it once did, the con artist has hardly disappeared. The objects of our credulity have simply changed. Today, we are sold rockets promising journeys we will never undertake, to destinations we have little desire to visit, and persuaded to part with our hard-earned money for ephemeral digital investments bearing fashionable names but possessing no intrinsic value.

We congratulate ourselves on our moral clarity, our education and our capacity for informed judgement, yet we willingly purchase candles supposedly redolent of anatomy and vote for the ultra-rich, who repeatedly demonstrate that they regard us less as citizens than as opportunities for exploitation. The contemporary Tartuffe need not pretend to speak for God; he need only convince us that he knows something we do not. And judging by our collective willingness to believe him, business is very good.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.instagram.com/raus_aus

Review: Next To Godliness (New Theatre)

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Venue: New Theatre (Newtown NSW), Oct 6 – 31, 2026
Playwright: Alastair Brown
Director: Madeleine Withington
Cast: Sonya Kerr, Alice Livingstone, Alisha O’Brien, Nathan Farrow, Brendan Kater, Jessica Carter, Sophie Newby, Harrison Collis-Oates
Images by Bob Seary

Theatre review
We descend into the underworld, where cleaners must scrub away evidence before the police arrive, and a contract killer plies her trade for both profit and pleasure. Next to Godliness by Alastair Brown offers a day in the lives of three women on the wrong side of the law. The criminal underbelly is ordinarily rich territory for drama, but this comedy yields precious few genuine laughs, and its plot never ignites.

Director Madeleine Withington marshals her performers with commendable precision, and the production maintains a consistent visual elegance, yet neither can compensate for the frailty of the writing. Tom Bannerman’s set design is handsomely proportioned and meticulously finished, its textures lending an aura of mystery, while Julian Dunne’s lighting is admirably dynamic, shading the storytelling with hints of menace and drama. The cast of eight display a dedication that is nothing short of admirable; even in the absence of wit or narrative momentum, they attack the material with boundless energy and unwavering commitment.

Next to Godliness aspires to be a portrait of colourful characters in unorthodox occupations. One could draw a parallel based on the curious kinship between criminals and artists: the former takes from society, the latter gives to it, yet both stand similarly beyond the boundaries of conventional life. A further truth is that artists so often command less respect than rogues, despite the fact that so much of life’s pleasures flow from their work.

www.newtheatre.org.au

Review: Stocktake (25A Belvoir)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Oct 4 – 25, 2026
Playwright: Jess Zlotnick
Director: Tasha O’Brien
Cast: Lib Campbell, Lucy X Dunning, Bridget Haberecht, Megan Kennedy, Kate Skinner
Images by Jane Coates

Theatre review
In one of the thousands of women’s clothing stores scattered throughout Australia’s shopping malls, a group of employees is required to conduct a stocktake after hours. Nobody particularly wants to be there, but the realities of economic survival demand that people suppress their own inclinations, grit their teeth and endure, if only to ensure that there is food on the table.

Jess Zlotnick’s Stocktake is a searing indictment of the plight of the working class under contemporary late-stage capitalism, although it is equally likely to be remembered for its riotous comedy. Clearly informed by lived experience at the lower rungs of the retail hierarchy, Zlotnick’s writing is as keenly observed as it is wildly imaginative. The play marries an acute understanding of low-wage precarity with surreal manifestations of systemic oppression, exposing the increasingly grotesque consequences of oligarchic power in a world where economic inequality continues to deepen.

Director Tasha O’Brien brings an uncompromising sense of gravity to a production that makes no attempt to disguise its solidarity with the working class. At the same time, she finds inventive ways to exploit the increasingly absurd circumstances, ensuring that the material remains as theatrically engaging as it is politically charged. The result is a work that insists we laugh even as the full indignity of our circumstances unfolds before us. O’Brien renders the injustices experienced by wage earners with admirable clarity, while layering each indignity with such irreverent humour that the production becomes both comedically irresistible and politically inescapable.

The visual elements of the staging are somewhat less assured. Hampered by obvious budgetary constraints, production design by Alice Vance and lighting by Caity Cowan do not always achieve the sophistication the material might warrant, although these limitations do little to diminish the overall effectiveness of the production. Harry Reid’s sound design is a particular strength, establishing an unsettling sense of metaphysical distortion that helps persuade us of the increasingly outlandish phenomena unfolding within an otherwise unremarkable clothing store.

The five-woman ensemble impresses through its collective commitment to this proletarian indictment. There are discernible disparities in performance experience and technical proficiency, but the cast’s collective achievement is consistently compelling. Together, the performers create a theatrical experience whose force derives less from individual virtuosity than from the cumulative power of their shared endeavour, lending the work a resonance that extends beyond the circumstances of its characters.

In an era of unprecedented billionaire wealth and the prospect of the world’s first trillionaire, it is tempting to succumb to political despondency, to assume that the battle has already been lost and that the 99 per cent is powerless to alter a trajectory seemingly destined for catastrophe. Stocktake, however, repeatedly reminds us that its women retain a measure of agency, even when the choices available to them are profoundly constrained. They must continually make decisions, often between alternatives that offer little more than different forms of deprivation. Such choices can appear futile, their outcomes dictated by a system that makes survival itself contingent upon submission.

Yet it is precisely through this recurring insistence on the necessity of choice that the play offers glimpses of what courage might mean under such conditions. Courage emerges as the fragile determination to act when every available option appears inadequate, and when the prospect of meaningful change seems increasingly remote. In a world determined to diminish us, surrendering the possibility of resistance would amount to accepting the very conditions from which we long to escape. Perhaps it is useful to imagine courage as something almost supernatural, a miraculous instrument capable of delivering us from circumstances that otherwise seem insurmountable.

www.belvoir.com.au

Review: Islander (ATYP)

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Venue: The Popsy (Sydney NSW), Oct 6 – 17 , 2026
Creator: Amy Draper
Book: Stewart Melton
Music & Lyrics: Finn Anderson
Director: Hayden Tonazzi
Cast: Georgia Laga’aia, Rebecca Ordiz
Images by Robert Catto

Theatre review
On the remote Scottish isle of Kinnan, a young girl named Eilidh discovers a beached whale calf, and fails to save it. Soon after, a mysterious stranger named Arran washes ashore from the very waters the whale departed, and an improbable friendship takes root between them. Islander, a 2017 musical written for two performers with a score composed almost entirely of the human voice, unfolds from this slender premise into something altogether more affecting.

Finn Anderson’s songs are wonderfully imaginative, possessing a transcendent quality that seems to reach out and hold the audience. Lauren Shaw’s musical direction is thrilling in its unpredictability, and together with Otto Zagala’s atmospheric sound design and Cameron Bartle’s exquisite sound engineering (a technical feat deserving of particular praise) the production’s aural landscape proves quite remarkable. The plot, drawn from Scottish folklore, is genuinely engaging, though when it reaches its dramatic apex, events take on a sudden, hurried momentum that leaves one somewhat disoriented; the abrupt shift in pace introduces a trace of incoherence into what had been, until then, a carefully measured narrative.

Visually, the set is spare, comprising a simple circular platform, but it is in the costumes that production designer Angelina Daniel makes her strongest impression, crafting pieces that speak to our affinity for the aesthetic traditions of the Pacific region. Tim Hope’s lighting could perhaps afford to be more extravagant, yet there is an unmistakable melancholy woven into his design that resonates beautifully with the production’s ecological undertones. Director Hayden Tonnazi imbues the staging with an emotional intensity that renders the experience genuinely compelling; there is a crispness to every element that keeps the audience rapt throughout.

Performers Georgia Laga’aia and Rebecca Ordiz are nothing short of astonishing. Their precision is matched only by their flawless chemistry, one senses a rigour of rehearsal behind every gesture, every harmony, and their storytelling is so assured that surrendering to it feels effortless.

Beyond the stage, the production carries an urgent resonance. The state of our ecology is, by any honest measure, in disarray. We are but one species among millions, yet the scale of our impact is immeasurably outsized. To witness the consequences of that impact, is to confront an uncomfortable truth: we are custodians of this planet, whether we accept the mantle or not. That we have so often behaved as plunderers instead is, beyond question, a profound shame.

www.atyp.com.au

Review: The Unfriend (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney NSW), Sep 29 – Oct 31, 2026
Playwright: Steven Moffat
Director: Simon Phillips
Cast: Ty Arnott, Brooklyn Davies, Huw Higginson, Alex Lee, Helen Thomson, Tim Walter, and Ben Wood.
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
The play’s prologue issues an early warning of sorts, deriding those who read publications such as The Guardian and suggesting that politically engaged people, particularly those on the left, derive a peculiar pleasure from being outraged by the news they consume. In doing so, Steven Moffat seems to announce that The Unfriend is deliberately apolitical, positioning itself outside the anxieties and ideological conflicts of the contemporary world before proceeding to make us laugh without engaging with any of the concerns that occupy us as real people.

Debbie and Peter meet Elsa while on holiday and, in an unfortunate lapse of judgement, invite her to stay at their English home. When they subsequently discover that Elsa is suspected of six murders, they have ample reason to reconsider their hospitality, yet find themselves incapable of actually disinviting their American guest. There is, perhaps, something enduringly recognisable in the British tendency towards excessive politeness, but comedy built around the inability to say no has arguably exhausted itself. The joke has been rehearsed so many times that its once-awkward charm has long since given way to trite familiarity.

Director Simon Phillips appears entirely conscious of the broadness of the comedy he has inherited. An extended sequence of toilet humour not only refuses to apologise for its vulgarity but positively revels in it, as though the production were declaring that this is precisely what we have come to see. There is no pretension, Phillips seems to insist, but neither is there any ambition towards intellectual or aesthetic sophistication. The production embraces its coarseness with an almost defiant lack of embarrassment.

Elsa is played by the eminently accomplished Helen Thomson, who demonstrates an impressive ability to extract comedy from almost anything, however banal or clichéd the material. Alex Lee and Tim Walter bring considerable energy to their portrayals of the painfully polite couple, supplementing their characters’ social awkwardness with an appropriate absurdity that helps sustain the increasingly implausible narrative. Ty Arnott and Huw Higginson likewise make the most of their eccentric characters, producing moments of genuine theatrical pleasure even when the comic mechanisms themselves remain conspicuously and toe-curlingly obvious.

The set design by Isabel Hudson is also worthy of commendation. Its immaculate evocation of middle-class respectability provides the production with a visual sumptuousness that compensates, to some extent, for the cheapness of the comic devices employed in the action itself. The contrast is almost revealing: the stage looks substantially more elegant than the material unfolding upon it.

Ben Phillipe wrote in 2021 that “if you have a life that leaves you fool proof to politics, your politics approximate to ‘privileged.’” For many of us, the present is experienced as a period of genuine emergency, making it difficult to accept the notion of political neutrality as an innocent artistic position. When artists, or indeed anyone with a public platform, declare themselves apolitical, it can instead suggest a position of sufficient privilege to permit looking away, to disregard the forces of social and political disintegration taking place around them.

The problem is not simply that such detachment can appear complacent. It is that the idea of being untouched by politics is itself a political luxury. We live within structures in which our lives are inevitably interconnected, and the rot permitted to fester in one part of society rarely remains contained there. More troubling still, indifference to the persecution of others risks creating the conditions in which authoritarian and fascistic tendencies can become increasingly emboldened. The targets may change, but the machinery of persecution does not require a permanent target; once one group has been exhausted, another can readily be found.

The Unfriend may therefore succeed on its own terms as an uncomplicated comedy, but its insistence on keeping politics at arm’s length becomes increasingly conspicuous. What the production treats as an escape from contemporary anxieties can also be understood as an unwillingness to confront them. In a moment when so much of public life is defined by precisely the political concerns the play chooses to dismiss, that refusal to engage begins to feel less like neutrality than a statement in itself.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: The Elevator (Ensemble Theatre)

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Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Sep 18 – Oct 18, 2026
Playwright: Eloise Snape
Director: Anthea Williams
Cast: Di Adams, Leeanna Walsman, Shirong Wu
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
The CEO of Eco Engines finds herself trapped inside her company’s AI-operated lift alongside two employees. The claustrophobic setting is tense enough, but it is the recent fatal accident involving one of Eco Engines’ autonomous vehicles that truly exposes the fault lines between them. Eloise Snape’s The Elevator is set in the near future, at a moment when the proliferation of robotics is accelerating and corporations seize every opportunity to automate in pursuit of profit, with scant regard for the ethical consequences left in their wake.

Snape’s decision to confine three women with radically different perspectives inside a malfunctioning lift creates fertile ground for an interrogation of some of today’s most pressing technological and moral dilemmas. The play is astute in its examination of accountability, corporate power and artificial intelligence, but much of its comedy fails to land. Anthea Williams’ direction is similarly unable to unlock the script’s humour, leaving the first half feeling laboured and occasionally awkward. Once the production relinquishes its obligation to be funny and allows its darker instincts to take over, it becomes something considerably more compelling.

Leeanna Walsman’s Margot, the CEO, is perhaps a touch too naturalistic, never quite locating the heightened absurdity of a ruthless executive in crisis mode. Yet her final monologue is extraordinary, delivering the production’s emotional and intellectual climax with breathtaking force. Shirong Wu brings irresistible effervescence to Alison, the company’s PR specialist, injecting buoyancy into scenes that might otherwise collapse under the weight of exposition. As maintenance worker Ollie, Di Adams is somewhat restrained emotionally, but her grounded presence lends the play an essential moral gravity.

Kelsey Lee’s set and lighting design cleverly overcome the visual limitations of a story confined entirely to a lift. Through meticulously calibrated shifts in colour, intensity and atmosphere, she creates imagery of surprising richness and variety within an inherently static environment. Daniel Herten’s sound design is equally effective, its ominous undertones gradually intensifying until they become an almost subliminal expression of the characters’ mounting dread.

From the outside, it is easy to imagine that Margot could simply refuse the responsibilities that violate her conscience. Yet the play’s more unsettling insight is that she no longer believes refusal is available to her. She has travelled too far down a path that now feels irreversible, where technological progress and commercial expansion have become moral absolutes rather than choices.

The Elevator ultimately suggests that it may already be too late to appeal to the conscience of tech oligarchs, many of whom appear consumed by self-aggrandising visions of inevitable technological and economic advancement. If there is hope of averting the nightmare scenarios that accompany our most prominent innovations, it lies not with those building the machines, but with governments willing to regulate them and with a public prepared to insist on accountability before progress becomes truly irreversible.

www.ensemble.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