Julia (Sydney Theatre Company) ★★★★★

Written by Joanna Murray-Smith. World Premiere. Sydney Theatre Company. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. 31 Mar – 20 May, 2023

Friends, Aussies, Countrymen, lend me your ears. We have come to the Drama Theatre of the Sydney Opera House today, not to examine the life and legacy of former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, but canonise her. This is St Julia, the patron saint of nailing misogynists to the wall and the new play, Julia, by Joanna Murray-Smith, is the origin story of a political superhero.

A personal aside: in 2012 I was living overseas and had been for 6 years. The only times I saw Australia on the news was either a sporting victory, or a political embarrassment in which Australia was treated as “oh those silly backward colonials” before jumping to a story about war or the economy. When people started asking me if I’d seen Julia Gillard’s speech I girded my loins for the next chapter of “oh Australia” before watching the Youtube link I was sent. Watching the speech made me proud, because finally someone was speaking out against the retrogrades that plague this country. But even more amazing was watching the reactions around me. This was an “Obama moment”. A piece of oratory that hit a universal chord. So it’s fitting that that speech has become the centrepiece of a proudly Australian play.

To quote The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”, and that is what Murray-Smith’s play does. It sorts through Julia Gillard’s life to find the right pieces to create a very specific narrative, an historical foundation around “the speech” that will support and elevate it, as if this were the driving hand of fate leading Gillard to one climactic moment. Murray-Smith takes a messy piece of real life and sculpts it into something that is less like theatre and more like an evangelical crusade, in which “the speech” is the final “salvation call”. This is Julia Gillard as Billy Graham.

And it’s a fiction really, a handpicked hagiography. The play nods at the difficulty of climbing the greasy pole of politics, but is quick to wash Gillard’s hands clean because those moments don’t conform to the way this story has to go. It glosses over the fact “the speech” was a brilliant piece of misdirection that swung the public eye away from a damaging scandal and reframed Gillard in the zeitgiest.

The construction of this mostly one-woman-show should be studied for the nuance it achieves and its excellent sense of rhythm. Julia plays with your emotions, nudging your pride and outrage, it does everything it needs to bring you the climax. “The speech” is always waiting in the wings filling you with antici…. (you’ve seen Rocky Horror, you know the drill). It frames the opening words “I will not” as if it were MLK saying “I have a dream” and doesn’t let you forget it.

Everything on stage has a clarity of purpose. Director Sarah Goodes gives Julia a confident restraint, knowing when to deploy the simple but emotive video design (by Susie Henderson). Our Julia, Justine Clarke, looks nothing like Gillard, but over the course of 90 minutes, she slowly transforms into her. Clarke gently modulates between her own performance and Gillard voice and mannerism for dramatic effect. By the time we hit the speech in full, Clarke has melted away and Gillard stands before you like this is the Second Coming.

All heroic journeys need villains and there are plenty to pick from in Gillard’s rise. Kevin Rudd is painted as a narcissist, Tony Abbott as a backward’s bigot, Alan Jones as… well, Alan Jones. Murray-Smith happily points the finger at those around Gillard. Clarke gives us moments of personal emotion that we, the public, were denied in real life – softening and humanising Gillard in ways the media never did at the time.

I keep thinking this feels like a ‘thing’. Instead of masking our insecurity with a larkin’s comedy about our politics, for once Australia is staging a piece that praises our own history and it feels utterly deserving. It’s the kind of pride we’re used to seeing in British or American theatre (or, even more weirdly, Australian theatre about America – I’m looking at your RBG: Of Many, One!), but rarely about our own history. This feels like we’ve put our famed ‘cultural cringe’ to bed, and aren’t ashamed to present Australian culture as a legitimate player on the world stage.

You can quibble over the accuracy or politics of the real Julia Gillard, but you can not question the strength of Julia, the play. This is dynamic, uplifting and revelatory theatre and the closest I’ve gotten to shouting “Amen!” in a very long time.