By Dennis Kelly. Sydney Theatre Company. State Theatre Co South Australia. Director Mitchell Butel. Wharf Theatre. 17 Sep – 1 Nov, 2026

Reviewed : 24 September, 2026

There are no writer’s notes to this play. The playwright – and the director – leave the play to speak for itself. It does. Intimately and honestly. It speaks harrowingly to a world that has become passive, desensitised, accepting … emotionally numb.

In an hour and fifty minutes Justine Clarke navigates the course of a marriage that begins with a “queue to board an easyJet flight” in Naples. She takes it through the relatively calm waters of exciting new love and commitment, making a home, building careers, welcoming the arrival of children – a girl and a boy – and the joys of being parents.

She doesn’t negate the difficulties of navigating squally weather. Rather she describes riding the rockier tides of change and mounting responsibilities together, with courage and hope and mutual support. When the tide turns, she describes seas that become unnavigable, and a storm that ends in destruction.

Clarke skilfully controls of the emotional impact of the script, accentuating the authenticity of the character through the rhythm of the accent and language. She charms the audience with her first few sentences and sustains that openness and sincerity in a performance that is direct, authentic, warm … and disturbing.

She makes the stage the woman’s life, using its width and colour to light up the highs and dim the lows she describes. She moves purposefully, or pauses reflectively, every change in pace and direction carefully planned and deftly defining the exacting tempo of the writing.

Mitchell Butel directs with sensitive awareness of the importance of changes in time and place and pace and the need for moments of pause and stillness. He acknowledges the “incredible sensitivity and respect” of the whole creative team behind this production. “The play encourages deep self and social reflection and we have all tried to emulate that in our work on it.”

Ailsa Paterson’s set is a colour palette that allows Clarke to take the woman from vivid descriptions of new love and colourful memories of growing children to the bright excitement of career success and the dull hollowness of despair. Nigel Levings lights every change with perceptive subtleness and restraint.

Butel acknowledges that “Girls & Boys is a play that asks many questions but puts the onus very squarely back on the audience to ruminate about its own answers. It is also a play that may work best when the audience has no prior knowledge of where it is heading.”

Thus, this is the time to stop – except to say that this production needs to be seen.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine.