Tag Archives: play

Review: Imelda (KXT on Broadway)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Jul 31 – Aug 15, 2026
Playwright: Donita Cruz
Director: Aden Abeleda
Cast: Alex Gonzalez, Tamara Lee Bailey, Ahlex Leyva, Teresa Tate Britten
Images by Andrea Magpulong

Theatre review
Maria Clara has lost her mother, yet the spectral visitations that haunt her remain tantalisingly ambiguous—are they truly her mother’s spirit, or the surreal presence of Imelda Marcos? For this Filipina-Australian woman, the relationship with her homeland is fractured and uneasy, much like the complicated affection many Filipinos still hold for the Marcos dynasty. Donita Cruz’s Imelda offers thoughtful insights into the diaspora experience alongside fascinating reflections on the Philippines’ recent history. Yet the work would be strengthened by a more deliberate establishment of its premise and a richer introduction to its characters. Director Aden Abeleda might also deepen the audience’s connection to the material by devoting greater care to context and conceit.

Teresa Tate Britten proves highly watchable as the actor at the centre; her tremendous focus is captivating in itself, even when the text stays too resolutely in the ephemeral. Alex Gonzalez, playing Maria Clara, struggles to fully inhabit the emotional terrain the role demands, never quite achieving the conviction required. Supporting players Tamara Lee Bailey and Ahlex Leyva, however, bring welcome textural and tonal variety to the piece. Both are memorable for grounding the atmosphere with considerable gravity, lending weight to a story that resonates deeply with many.

Rachel Adams’s set design shows little ambition, though EJ Zielinski’s lighting compensates somewhat, rendering supernatural spaces with a welcome theatricality. Video projections by Alyssa Dimarucut and Donita Cruz add memorable touches, their cultural specificity enriching the experience in ways the physical production does not.

Myth-making is, after all, a fundamental human impulse. We are creatures who must find ways to comprehend a world that remains endlessly mysterious; the not-knowing can feel agonising, even anxiety-inducing. To forge personal and communal identities—however provisional, however fluid—is itself a kind of necessity. And to move through life with direction, with hope for what lies ahead, requires that we craft the best possible version of volatile narratives, if only to carry us through the fleeting present.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.instagram.com/sapatosangelscollective

Review: Top Silk (Ensemble Theatre)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Jul 31 – Sep 12, 2026
Playwright: David Williamson
Director: Mark Kilmurry
Cast: Nicholas Brown, Thomas Campbell, Laurence Coy, Rachel Gordon, Samir Nasser, Jamie Oxenbould, Jeremy Waters
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
Jane and Trevor have done very well for themselves as lawyers, yet there comes a moment in every ascent to power when the individual is forced to confront a dilemma that strikes at the very core of their humanity. David Williamson’s 1989 play Top Silk examines the difficult choices people make when ambition collides with conscience, and the personal cost of success when the stakes are impossibly high.

The text itself has not aged with particular grace; its dialogue can feel stilted, its rhythms occasionally dated. Yet director Mark Kilmurry infuses the production with sufficient dramatic tension that the script’s awkwardness recedes, allowing us to focus instead on how these characters navigate their precarious circumstances. The dilemmas they face—compromises between professional duty and moral instinct—still resonate, and Kilmurry ensures they land with genuine force.

Much of the production’s success rests on an excellent ensemble, led by two commanding performances. Rachel Gordon’s Jane is rendered with fierce conviction; she makes her character’s desire to do what she believes is right utterly persuasive, even as she allows us to see the professional integrity being quietly eroded. Nicholas Brown, as Trevor, achieves something equally difficult: he makes each ethical compromise appear not merely reasonable but almost inevitable, and does so without letting his character’s immense privilege obscure his underlying humanity. Together, they generate a compelling chemistry that gives the drama its crackle and the humour its surprising bite.

The design elements serve the production with similar intelligence. Ailsa Paterson’s set accommodates the play’s shifting locations with resourceful economy while still conferring upon the courtroom scenes their requisite sense of grandeur. Kelsey Lee’s lighting navigates a wide spectrum of atmospheric intensity with precision, and Madeleine Picard’s sound design seizes unexpected moments to introduce flourish and theatrical texture.

Society likes to pretend that right and wrong are clearly demarcated, but Top Silk understands that life rarely offers such tidy distinctions. When one is caught in the grey—where there are no convenient blacks and whites—it is not simply a question of what is correct, but of what one is willing to risk. The play asks how much an individual is prepared to sacrifice for the courage to go against the grain, and in this production, that question feels as relevant as ever.

www.ensemble.com.au

Review: Bennelong In London (Sydney Theatre Company)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: Wharf 1 Sydney Theatre Company (Walsh Bay NSW), Jul 18 – Aug 16, 2026
Playwright: Jane Harrison
Director: Ian Michael
Cast: Googoorewon Knox, Guy Simon
Images by Daniel Boud

Theatre review
An actor preparing to audition for the role of Bennelong—that celebrated Aboriginal diplomat from the turbulent dawn of colonisation—finds himself doing more than rehearsing lines. In the quiet of his living room, he summons the historical figure into startling, flesh-and-blood existence. What follows is a conversation across centuries: the ancestor clarifying his legacy, the actor grappling to comprehend it from a vantage point more than two hundred years removed.

Jane Harrison’s Bennelong in London is a work of remarkable intellectual architecture—thoroughly researched, astutely considered—yet it never sacrifices emotional immediacy for scholarly rigour. From a contemporary Aboriginal perspective, it interrogates Aboriginality and colonialism with clear-eyed acknowledgment of the endlessly complex entanglements that define life on colonised Indigenous lands. The play holds space for contradiction: the difficulty of honouring the past while pressing forward into the present, all the while remaining unflinching about the injustices visited upon this country’s rightful custodians. Though its themes run deep and serious, the work brims with humour, much of it arising from the friction between two men separated by epochs yet thrown together in intimate proximity.

Director Ian Michael handles this tonal balancing with supreme deftness, blending levity and sorrow in an exploration of identity and legacy that speaks as urgently to First Nations peoples today as it does to settlers. The emotional texture of the storytelling finds especially potent expression in James Peter Brown’s music, whether threading subtly beneath the action or rising to prominence as a centrepiece of the staging. Brown’s compositions pull the audience deep into the work’s intense sentimentality, rendering abstract historical grief into something viscerally moving.

Trent Suidgeest’s lighting design carries us fluidly between realism and the fantastical, lending credibility to whichever psychological territory the play chooses to inhabit, while discovering unexpected beauty in the theatrical transformation of an otherwise ordinary domestic space. Emma White’s set ingeniously weaves native flora into a contemporary living room, quietly signalling the duality embedded in everyday life for those negotiating Indigeneity amid persistent colonising forces. Her costumes, by contrast, adopt a more straightforward approach—two men from different centuries, simply dressed, simply meeting.

Googoorewon Knox is endlessly likeable as Bennelong, his charisma matched by a musicality that proves invaluable whenever the performance shifts into more traditional registers. Some of his storytelling occasionally lacks vividness—certain historical details risk being lost in the telling—yet the power of his ancestral invocation remains beyond question. Equally spirited is Guy Simon as the modern-day Aboriginal man seeking a history that is at once intimately personal and consequentially vast. The grace with which Simon pivots between lightness and gravity throughout the piece is genuinely astonishing, and his ability to bring such unguarded earnestness to this vital story feels especially precious in these cynical times.

Like every colonised being, Bennelong could only do his best within circumstances engineered for destruction. We might hope to resist with heroism, or at least to survive with grace, but the truth is more humbling: the everyday negotiations with pervasive, malicious systems of exploitation mean we will often fall short. Bennelong was far from perfect, yet we can see precisely why—and we can carry that understanding forward as inspiration, strengthening how we regard ourselves and one another in the ongoing, unfinished work of decolonisation.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: Pride & Prejudice (Sort Of) (Sydney Opera House)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Jul 16 – Aug 30, 2026
Playwright: Isobel McArthur (after Jane Austen)
Director: Simon Harvey
Cast: Zoe Ioannou, Amy Lehpamer, Kaori Maeda Judge, Ruby Shannon, Teo Vergara
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
It is the old story, but told through five servants who have witnessed everything in absolute, unbroken silence. Pride & Prejudice (sort of) by Isobel McArthur arrives dressed as a theatrical reframing of the Austen novel, its dialogue translated into contemporary vernacular.

Yet for all the surface disruption, the narrative itself remains largely untouched. When the women from downstairs first appear, one anticipates a recalibration—characters and incidents seen from below, sharpened by resentment or envy. Instead, we receive the same familiar tale delivered through a more economical mechanism: five performers assuming every role.

Simon Harvey’s direction moves at a brisk clip, infusing the piece with a mischievous energy that carries much of the humour. Songs punctuate the storytelling, though the choice of largely 1980s hits for 1813 teenagers playing to a 2026 audience creates a curious dissonance. These young women are neither faithful period renderings nor convincing modern types; they are not of the Regency era, yet they are not quite of ours either.

The performers, however, are uniformly excellent—skilful, personable, and resourceful. Their chemistry is palpable, the rhythm they establish lending the production a polished, self-assured momentum. Their playfulness generates genuine laughter, even when the writing itself falls short.

There is, after all, a particular pleasure in laughing at the upper echelons—their concerns trivial, their constitutions fragile. We instinctively believe our own burdens weightier, our resilience greater, and take quiet satisfaction in their ineptitude. The servants of the Bennets, Bingleys, and Darcys would surely have offered observations far more incisive, far more savagely funny. That we do not hear them suggests some of us remain reluctant to listen to voices from below even Austen’s own.

www.goodingproductions.com | www.woodwardproductions.com

Review: Thirty-Six (Qtopia)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Jul 8 – 18, 2026
Playwrights: Jo Clifford, Bayley Turner
Director: Kitan Petkovski
Cast: Bayley Turner
Images by Andrew Kim

Theatre review
Turning thirty-five might ordinarily invite a quiet celebration, but for Bayley Turner, the milestone carries a heavier shadow. The spectre of that oft-cited, entirely unsubstantiated statistic—that trans women seldom live beyond thirty-five—looms over her birthday, colouring the occasion with an unavoidable gravity. Yet the anxieties it stirs are hardly spectral alone; they are tethered to the tangible hardships of trans existence, the material and psychological tolls that accumulate in a world still reluctant to make room.

For all the generations of trans people who have lived, loved, and endured before us, their voices have rarely been granted the platforms or the permanence to offer those who follow something solid to hold onto—reference points, roadmaps, or simply the comfort of being understood. Thirty-Six, the one-woman play Turner has created with her seventy-five-year-old mentor Jo Clifford, arrives as something rare: an intergenerational conversation rendered in performance, giving shape to the sorrow and fear, but also the unexpected joy and stubborn inspiration, of living openly as trans in an era of unprecedented visibility. The work is unflinching in its honesty, and both creators have evidently plumbed its ideas with a depth that leaves few difficult truths unexamined.

If the purpose of art is to haul what remains unsaid into the light, then Thirty-Six is an undeniably significant achievement. Where it falters is in its theatrical imagination: the writing, for all its emotional intelligence, could sit almost as comfortably on the page as it does on the stage. It lacks the particular immediacy that distinguishes drama from literature—those irreplaceable collisions of body, voice, and space that demand live performance.

Fortunately, director Kitan Petkovski intervenes with ingenuity, finding visual textures to animate the monologue and expanding the hour-long staging into something that nearly matches the words in captivation. Spencer Herd’s lighting bathes the space in a warm, flattering glow that never quite lets us forget the melancholy threading beneath; it is an invitation into sentiment without surrendering to it. Aron Murray’s video projections lend variety to the visual landscape, while Jack Burmeister’s score moves nimbly between uplift and sombreness, calibrating atmosphere with a deft hand.

As performer, Turner is a compelling presence—effortlessly charismatic, possessed of a confidence that keeps the audience held close throughout. There is an ease to her delivery that reassures, even if one senses she is capable of still greater dramatic complexity given more demanding material.

The myth of the thirty-five-year lifespan may be exactly that, but the reality it gestures toward is no fiction. Without stable housing, secure employment, adequate healthcare, and communities that sustain rather than isolate, trans lives are routinely foreshortened—made not only harder but often less fully lived. For as long as the standards of care and dignity remain so starkly divided between cis and trans existence, works like Thirty-Six that insist on naming these disparities will remain not merely welcome, but essential.

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

Review: Doubt: A Parable (Sydney Theatre Company)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney NSW), Jun 30 – Aug 2, 2026
Playwright: John Patrick Shanley
Director: Marion Potts
Cast: Zindzi Okenyo, Shannen Alyce Quan, Pamela Rabe, Sam Reid
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
Sister Aloysius is convinced that Father Flynn has engaged in inappropriate conduct with at least one student at St. Nicholas Church School, and she is determined to see him removed. When Doubt: A Parable by John Patrick Shanley premiered in 2004, revelations of sexual abuse and institutional cover-ups within the Catholic Church were dominating headlines around the world. Two decades later, while public attention has shifted to other forms of moral and political failure, the play continues to resonate with an alarming disquiet. Its enduring power lies not only in the persistence of abuse by those in authority, but in the unsettling ease with which certainty is formed without proof, and belief sustained in the absence of evidence.

Under Marion Potts’s direction, however, the production resists becoming an overtly political reading. Instead, it returns the play to its theatrical core: a taut, claustrophobic drama driven by tension, moral ambiguity, and competing convictions. The result is gripping from start to finish, sustaining an atmosphere of mounting unease that keeps the audience in a constant state of uncertainty.

The performances are superb across the board. Pamela Rabe’s Sister Aloysius is steely and unyielding, her severity edged with conviction that is as compelling as it is unsettling. Sam Reid brings a volatile emotional interior to Father Flynn, carefully calibrating warmth and defensiveness in a way that keeps his guilt or innocence deliberately opaque. There is an implied undercurrent of homophobia in the accusations against the priest, and Reid navigates his subplot of resistance with remarkable nuance and power.

As Sister James, Shannen Alyce Quan astonishes with her precision in a complex role that demands multiple shifts in allegiance; she consistently depicts heightened psychological transformations while maintaining a believable naturalism that renders an extremely challenging part utterly convincing. Zindzi Okenyo is unforgettable as Mrs. Muller, bringing fierce tenacity and genuine spirit to this intense production.

Design elements are equally accomplished. Bob Cousin’s set is perfectly proportioned, showcasing austere locations in ways that are as dramaturgically sound as they are visually striking, balancing narrative necessity with a refined sense of theatricality. Damien Cooper’s lighting is subtly rendered, never overreaching in a play that demands visual restraint. Jessica Dunn’s music is a particular highlight; each interlude enhances the emotive qualities of the visceral storytelling, most impressively through the splendid incorporation of live singing by the cast.

It has been nearly two years since seventy-seven million Americans voted to return Donald Trump to the presidency. Despite extensive evidence of misconduct and conviction on multiple felony counts, his political support has remained largely intact, sustained by narratives that persist in defiance of fact. The details differ, but the underlying mechanism feels familiar: certainty without verification, belief hardened against contradiction. In that sense, Doubt remains less a period piece than an unnervingly contemporary one, reflecting how easily blind faith can override evidence, and how costly that substitution can be.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: The Day Of The Triffids (New Theatre)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: New Theatre (Newtown NSW), Jun 30 – Jul 25, 2026
Playwright: J. James-Moody (based on the novel by John Wyndham)
Director: J. James-Moody
Cast: James Collins, Claudia Elbourne, Nathan Farrow, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Kate Mannix, Max Ryan, Umai Shantharajah, Natasha Todd
Images by Chris Lundie

Theatre review
In the wake of a devastating meteor shower that leaves swathes of humanity blind, carnivorous plants known as triffids emerge to prey upon the vulnerable. John Wyndham’s 1952 novel, The Day of the Triffids, is indelibly a product of its time—an era when science fiction writers sought to metabolise the recent trauma of war through allegories of invasion by extraterrestrial or mutated foes, as though mass destruction could only be processed when refracted through the lens of the fantastical.

J. James-Moody’s new stage adaptation nods toward contemporary relevance with scattered technological references, capitalising on the peculiar modern terror of artificial intelligence and the men who orchestrate its proliferation. Yet these gestures feel insufficient; the text remains stubbornly dated, bogged down by protracted exposition that offers the audience few footholds for emotional engagement. We scarcely find ourselves resonating with the narrative or its characters, and the production struggles to inspire genuine sentiment.

Where James-Moody fares considerably better is in his direction. He cultivates a carnival-like atmosphere, alive with mischief and playfulness that wins us over, at least intermittently. The staging abounds with imagination; while this inventiveness certainly entertains, it does little to advance the story with any real purpose.

The design elements, by contrast, are immaculate. Holly Nesbitt’s lighting is dynamic and resourceful, delivering one striking visual tableau after another. Aubtin Namdar’s sound design and music are meticulously calibrated, enriching each scene with atmospheric precision. If the production fails to tell its story with clarity, it nevertheless astonishes with its technical and aesthetic faculties.

James Collins, playing Bill, the biologist navigating the apocalypse, provides a steadying centre—reliable, if never quite commanding. The seven-strong supporting ensemble proves equally personable, rising to the challenge of creating a spirited, occasionally raucous energy, though they never fully seize and hold our attention.

Wyndham’s novel ultimately celebrates the solidarity that can form in resistance to terror. Yet there is something unsettling about characterising the enemy as fundamentally alien—a narrative reflex of the postwar period that now feels increasingly difficult to endorse. Surveying the crises of our own age, one cannot escape the uncomfortable truth that we ourselves are the agents of so much that is destructive, even as we remain among its casualties.

www.newtheatre.org.au

Review: The Dapto Chaser (Ensemble Theatre)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Jun 29 – Jul 25, 2026
Playwright: Mary Rachel Brown
Director: Anna Houston
Cast: Peter Carroll, Marco Chiappi, André de Vanny, Justin Rosniak
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
The Sinclairs have made a ruin of their lives, pouring everything into the quixotic pursuit of greyhound racing. In Mary Rachel Brown’s The Dapto Chaser, we watch generations of men tether themselves to a fixation they mistake for destiny, convinced that persistence alone will deliver them from their circumstances. To the audience, the arithmetic is mercilessly clear: the house never loses. It is tempting to read their devotion as mere folly, the wages of poor choices. Yet Brown invites us to recognise a more uncomfortable mirror. Most of us may not wager on the dogs, but we commit to capitalism with a comparable fervour, persuaded that the system pays out fairly to those who play by the rules. The truth, of course, is that capital rewards capital; the rest of us navigate by dim light, following the doctrines handed down by those who profit from our faith.

Brown’s play is not, at its core, a political treatise, though it certainly concerns itself with Australian class structures. First and foremost, it is a masterclass in wit, delivered with precision and velocity. The humour, rich in ocker texture, will prove satisfying especially to those who favour that particular style of language. Anna Houston’s direction sharpens the comedy to a needlepoint, mining every beat for maximum effect so that even viewers who find the cultural milieu foreign will be laughing despite themselves. Her attention to dramatic architecture is equally assured, inflating the stakes until they feel perilous, and securing our emotional investment with deceptive ease.

The production design reinforces this immediacy. Simone Romaniuk’s set and costumes evoke poverty not as aestheticised misery but as lived-in dilapidation, telling their own visual story with unflinching honesty. Between scenes, Matt Cox’s lighting and Madeleine Picard’s score seize every opportunity for theatrical flourish, enriching the dramaturgy while lifting the production into something more expansive than naturalism.

At the centre stands Justin Rosniak as Cess, delivering a performance of captivating intensity. His emotional volatility and fearless comic timing ensure we remain locked to the family’s trajectory, finding entertainment and pathos in equal measure. He is ably supported by Peter Carroll, Marco Chiappi, and André de Vanny, all of whom demonstrate the skill this bittersweet comedy demands.

We want the Sinclairs to break their patterns, to glimpse the impossibility of the dreams they have chased for so long. More than that, we are left wondering whether our own capitalistic commitments—to the promises of merit, of fair reward, of the system’s eventual benevolence—are any less delusory than a winning ticket at the track.

www.ensemble.com.au

Review: First, Do No Harm (KXT on Broadway)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Jun 24 – Jul 4, 2026
Playwright: Grace Malouf
Director: Charley Allanah, Grace Malouf
Cast: Kate Bookallil, Barry French, Richard Hilliar, Josh Merten, Shan-Ree Tan
Images by Laura Elaine

Theatre review
Alexei is an Olympic hopeful whose swimming career has begun to falter at just nineteen years of age. He harbours a secret that is compromising his athletic performance, yet revealing it would invite controversy of the most personal kind. As the burden of concealment becomes unbearable, the truth can no longer remain hidden.

Grace Malouf’s First, Do No Harm transcends its ostensible sporting milieu to interrogate a far more fundamental proposition: the sovereignty of the body itself. The drama excavates the reverberations of a single individual’s corporeal self-determination, tracing how such a decision propagates through the social fabric with disquieting complexity. Malouf’s dramatic structure may lack formal daring, yet it grips with undeniable force; what it sacrifices in stylistic flair, it repays in intellectual and emotional depth. The work avoids theatrical showmanship, but its careful thought is unmistakable, emerging from an unflinching engagement with a subject that remains, in contemporary discourse, not only relevant but urgent.

Co-directed by Malouf and Charley Allanah, the production forgoes imaginative spectacle for an almost austere directness—an approach that, rather than diminishing the work, forges an uncommon intimacy with its audience, engaging both intellect and affect with precision. The staging distills narrative to its essential elements; this reduction, though occasionally risking oversimplification, ultimately crystallises the play’s conceptual preoccupations with remarkable efficacy.

Holden Jane Cohle’s production design requires more work to invite visual interest, while Theodore Carroll’s lighting offers occasional moments of striking inventiveness, even if such flourishes are used sparingly. Ellie Wilson’s sound design is likewise understated, but it rises effectively to the demands of the drama at key emotional moments.

Josh Merten inhabits Alexei with a passion that never tips into histrionics, grounding an ostensibly implausible psychological condition in emotional authenticity. His performance renders the extraordinary not merely credible but viscerally immediate. Richard Hilliar, as Alexei’s father and villain of the piece, Robert, constructs a figure of compelling contradiction—simultaneously antagonistic and vulnerable, comprehensible yet beyond easy absolution. Kate Bookallil, Barry French, and Shan-Ree Tan complete the ensemble with commendable proficiency.

The ordeal Alexei endures may be deeply unsettling, yet the play insists on a challenging idea: however objectionable his desires seem, only he has the right to decide. First, Do No Harm shows us how much we tend to believe that our own views entitle us to govern how others live. The production offers a vital reminder that the most durable achievement of democratic life lies not in consensus, but in our mutual tolerance—the willingness to allow one another the liberty to inhabit our own lives.

www.kingsxtheatre.com

Review: The Roommate (Ensemble Theatre)

Posted in Theatre by

Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Jun 19 – Jul 25, 2026
Playwright: Jen Silverman
Director: Lee Lewis
Cast: Lucy Bell, Belinda Bromilow
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
Sharon, newly divorced, finds herself unmoored—liberated from the obligations of marriage and motherhood yet utterly unprepared for autonomy. Having spent decades in Iowa as wife and mother, she has never cultivated an identity beyond servitude; the sudden absence of duty leaves her not merely free but adrift, hollowed out by a life lived in reflexive deference to others. Into this vacuum steps Robyn, a transplant from New York whose existence—vivid, self-determined, almost voluptuously full—represents a universe Sharon can scarcely comprehend, let alone inhabit. The collision between these two women proves both transformative and darkly comic; what begins as an education becomes an emancipation.

In The Roommate, Jen Silverman crafts a narrative that transcends the familiar midlife-awakening template. The play interrogates the architecture of submission—how the rules imposed upon Sharon were never benign conventions but instruments of subjugation, internalized so thoroughly that freedom itself becomes disorienting. Silverman understands that metamorphosis is not merely political but physical: a woman relearning her own appetites, her own voice, her own capacity for transgression. Director Lee Lewis approaches Sharon’s trajectory with evident relish, mining the text for its comic exuberance while never trivializing the radical nature of her reinvention. The production recognizes that joy, here, is itself a political act—the pleasure of a body and mind finally claiming ownership of themselves.

Lucy Bell delivers a performance of remarkable dexterity as Sharon, charting the character’s evolution from desperate, almost feral hunger to something approaching sovereignty. She locates the absurdity inherent in Sharon’s naïveté without condescending to it, and grounds the later acts of rebellion in genuine emotional stakes. There is both levity and gravitas in this portrait of self-discovery; Bell renders Sharon’s awakening not as a gentle blooming but as something more disruptive, more voracious.

As Robyn, Belinda Bromilow offers a necessary counterweight—less exuberant than Bell, perhaps, but possessed of an authenticity that prevents the dynamic from collapsing into caricature. Robyn is not merely the catalyst for Sharon’s transformation but a woman undergoing her own quiet excavation, similarly engaged in the arduous work of self-definition.

The production design by Simone Romaniuk operates with astute visual economy, evoking the American landscape through carefully calibrated contrasts—costume and spatial details that externalize the friction between Robyn’s cultivated cosmopolitanism and Sharon’s unexamined provincialism. Matt Cox’s lighting provides understated but precise atmospheric modulation, tracing the characters’ shifting psychological registers without ostentation. Madeleine Picard’s compositions, deployed during scene transitions, maintain narrative momentum with inventive sonic textures that sustain our anticipation for each new development.

What resonates most profoundly is the play’s recognition that Sharon’s ignorance has been structurally cultivated—partly self-imposed, yes, but largely enforced by a hegemony that reduces her to fungible labor, a minor component in an indifferent apparatus. Yet The Roommate refuses easy binaries of victimhood and liberation. Robyn, too, is in flight from a past that no longer fits; her apparently charmed existence conceals its own disillusionments. The feminist dimension of Silverman’s work is unmistakable but never didactic—her argument extends beyond gender to encompass anyone reduced to instrumentality, anyone whose self-possession has been systematically eroded. The play ultimately insists that claiming one’s life is not a single dramatic rupture but a continuous, often comic, occasionally terrifying process of becoming.

www.ensemble.com.au