Sunday (Sydney Theatre Co) ★★★★★

Written by Anthony Weigh. Sydney Theatre Company. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. 28 Oct – 14 Dec, 2024.

Things are simmering in the Melbourne Theatre Company transfer of Anthony Weigh’s Sunday, now playing as part of Sydney Theatre Company’s 2024 season. Like its lead character, Sunday Reed, the play has opinions and is more than happy to share them.

In the 1930s, Sunday Reed (Nikki Shiels) and her husband John (Matt Day) have bought an old dairy farm by the Yarra. It was an impulsive decision, but the property would take on a life of its own as a haven for modern artists, eventually to be known as the “Heide set”. When they find a young man unexpectedly standing in their home, they meet Sidney Nolan (James O’Connell) who is desperately seeking help to get to Paris to “learn to see”. But Sunday will have none of his colonial mindset and challenges him to look outside and see Australia with the same eye.

John and Sunday Reed were pioneers, fostering a new creative community and changing the Australian art scene. The Heide Set, named after the farm’s location in Heidelberg Victoria, were a bohemian collective, experimenting with art, sex and societal norms to make them fit their own vision. The Reeds and Nolan would live as a throuple for many years, while Nolan would paint his iconic Ned Kelly series.

As presented in Weigh’s loquacious but propelling script, Sunday is an iconoclast, forever challenging the people around her. There is a visceral thrill in Shiels performance as the men she is pushing stand up to her provocations. The minute they weaken she is bored. It drives a sexual energy through the almost three hour running time that never lessens, filling the near empty set with life. Shiels is simply on fire as Sunday Reed. Her intellectual sparring with John is matched only by the kinetic attraction of Sidney. 

Weigh gets a lot of laughs with the familiar battle between Sydney & Melbourne, best illustrated in the opening moments as Sunday describes the different colour palates of various cities. As she describes the different qualities of the colour blue in Sydney or Brisbane, the juxtaposition of lush European greens to Australia’s hot yellow/greens, you see the way her eye and mind operate. She does not paint, but she is a producer, mentor and muse to the painter. 

Director Sarah Goodes describes Sunday as an exercise in myth-making. Taking the bare facts we know of the Reeds and Nolans relationship and filling in the blanks. In doing so they have constructed a vision of Sunday Reed that is the classic “bold modern woman born in the wrong era”. Forced to forge a path for herself because the world around her did not suit her personality, Sunday and John create their own oasis. Rejecting bourgeois Australia’s fawning fascination with Europe, they sought to elevate our own visions, our own landscapes and talents.

I was instantly in love with Anna Cordingley’s sparse, oversize set – two walls with hidden entrances and long, horizontal cutout holding a screen (that mimicked Nolan’s Ned Kellys). Its openness evoked a sense of scale and wide country vistas we never see, but feel through the combination of Paul Jackson’s haze-filled lights and Jethro Woodward’s sound.

With a tour de force performance from Nikki Shiels as Sunday, and stunning visuals, this is a real winner. An absolute, bang-on great piece of theatre.