By Deborah Bruce. Tiny Dog. Director: Kim Hardwick. Old Fitz Theatre. 18 Sept – 3 Oct, 2026
Reviewed : 20 September, 2026
The advertising for Dixon and Daughters warned that the play included “references to violence against women and girls including child sexual abuse and domestic violence”.
As we watched the play on 21st September on a sunny Sunday afternoon four people had been killed in acts of domestic violence. Three women … and a child. In one state. In one weekend.
The women in Dixon and Daughters lived with the results of domestic violence and abuse – the scars, guilt, shame, fear, repression, disgust, distrust … and secrecy. Yet they remained silent for over thirty years. Until one of them spoke out.
Based on the stories from women in prison who shared their lives with Clean Break, a UK theatre company, Deborah Bruce’s play challenges
“us to look beyond the armour people wear and meet the person they’ve been protecting all along … and stand witness to their courage.” (Kim Hardwick- director).
Mary Dixon, her daughters Bernie and Julie, and her stepdaughter Briana wore the armour of shame for years. Deborah Bruce gives them the chance to gradually shed that armour in a series of accusations and admissions that are painful, and exhausting – but strangely cleansing.
Kim Hardwick directs with a gentle hand, giving the actors the opportunity to reach deeply inside their characters to find their hurt and shame, their bitterness, resentment and anger – then portray it in performances that are raw and harrowing – but also tenderly revealing.
Hardwick uses space and distance carefully to accentuate the tension that simmers from the opening moments of the play. It starts with Vanessa Downing’s entrance as Mary Dixon returning home after six months in prison. Downing’s movements are measured, precise, her gaze fixed and cold, her jaw tense. The woman she portrays is angry, embittered, tightly self-disciplined. Downing sustains that tightness for almost all of the play … until it is released in a heart-breaking, liberating admission. It is a stunning performance.
Linda Nicholls-Gidley plays Mary’s daughter Bernie. Like Mary she is contained and wary, but more giving– and very protective of her own daughter, Ella. Nichols-Gidley makes Bernie efficient but harried, constantly aware and on edge especially as she tries to offset the niggling hostility that begins to bubble – and contain the suspicion that she has bothered her for years.
Her sister Julie is a mass of nerves and anxiety. Romney Hamilton finds the deep insecurity and self-loathing in this young mother who seems to be the family outcast. The Julie she portrays cringes under criticism but cries out to be heard and understood. The play takes Julie through a rollercoaster of emotions and Hamilton shows her fighting desperately against deprecation yet shrinking and telescoping into despair. The only one who really sees her is the stepsister, Briana.
It was Briana who saw the opportunity to shatter the silence that shrouded the family – and consequently expose it to dishonour. Sarah Jane Starr creates a Briana who is gritty, determined, someone who has risen above the shame of abuse and named it – and in the process destroyed any stability the family had cleaved. And she is determined to make Dixon and her daughters admit the violence they lived with and “stand straight”.
Unlike the other women, Briana moves fast, speaks loudly and ignores personal space and emotional barriers, until she eventually breaks down the defences Mary and Bernie live behind and forces them – and a more confident Julie – to speak out.
In contrast, the youngest of the family Ella, spends much of the play quietly watchful, her concern for Mary tempered by the rising tension. Danette Potgieter makes Ella aware and perceptive, with an edginess that is eventually exposed as harassment from one of the university staff. Fortunately, Briana has the answer to curtailing that!
Though there is some warmth in this dysfunctional family, and a little lightness, the humour in the play comes through Leigh, a young ex-prisoner who Mary has befriended. Rylea Eilis makes Leigh down to earth, street wise but still vulnerable, handling the tensions in the house with cheeky asides and unfiltered candour.
Kim Hardwick has directed with empathy and sensitivity allowing her cast to expose the characters’ fragility as well as the strength that sustained them through more than thirty years of debasement and violent abuse. The tension in this production is overt, the emotion intense, the compassion for the characters warm.
The messages, unfortunately, are more than real.
“We can’t allow ourselves to become numb to this sort of violence.” – NSW Premier Minns 21/9/2026
Also published in Stage Whispers magazine