Emerald City (Ensemble) ★★★

Written by David Williamson. Ensemble Theatre. 18 Jul – 23 Aug, 2025.

Time is a funny thing, and the Ensemble Theatre has done us a huge favour by presenting classic and contemporary David Williamson in the same season. It’s a great opportunity to see how he has evolved as a writer over the decades. With the new production of Emerald City—his Sydney-skewering high point from the 1980s—we can now look back with wry amusement.

Colin (Tom O’Sullivan) is a screenwriter known for solid, respected films about the Australian middle class. His wife, Kate (Rachel Gordon), works in book publishing. Together, this “champagne-socialist” couple have traded Melbourne’s café culture for Sydney’s glistening avarice, where waterfront proximity defines your status.

When Colin struggles to excite his producer Elaine (Danielle Carter, very much in her element) about his next project, he meets Mick (Matt Minto), an entrepreneurial scriptwriter tired of talky, arty films. Mick wants to make Hollywood-style blockbusters in Australia. Mick needs industry credibility; Colin needs commercial success—they just both need to hold their noses and compromise.

Let’s get the most insufferable aspect of Emerald City out of the way: the constant fourth-wall breaks. Characters frequently monologue directly to the audience—mid-scene, mid-conversation—which mostly feels unnecessary. This stylistic flourish disrupts scene rhythm and oddly resembles a reality-TV show cutting to cast interviews. Williamson was ahead of his time, but the didactic tone of the monologues feels clumsy compared to his later work.

The cast handles these moments well enough, though not flawlessly. Thankfully, the rest of the play strikes the right notes. In the battle of art versus commerce, commerce always wins—best illustrated through Kate’s publishing subplot. While Colin is consumed by impotent ambition, Kate quietly soars and convinces herself that enjoying the spoils doesn’t compromise her integrity. Williamson also slips in some excellent one-liners on marriage and relationships, and Kate feels far more realistic than Colin.

Simple staging by Dan Potra, including evocative ’80s/Ken Done harbour-inspired illustrations, keeps us focused. The costuming feels a touch on-the-nose: Colin starts off wearing a black turtleneck (Melbourne!), before changing into a gaudy shirt (Sydney!).

The Sydney of Emerald City is a peculiar metropolis—one we might not recognise today. Its reputation as Melbourne’s cruder, shallower cousin still rings true (just compare radio’s Kyle & Jackie O, who tops the ratings in Sydney but flopped in Melbourne). Yet this avaricious chase for harbour views feels distant from 2025, where most people simply try to buy… any house.

Of course, this production plays not just anywhere in Sydney, but at the Ensemble Theatre—literally perched on the harbour central to the story. We are surrounded by the very homes the play depicts. The audience clearly enjoyed reminiscing about the ’80s and their own journeys to waterfront properties.

The sad irony of Emerald City is that Mick’s vision of the film industry has triumphed. After the Australian New Wave’s golden age in the ’70s, backed by strong government support, the industry shrank in the ’90s and pivoted into an international production hub for Hollywood blockbusters with little local relevance—just as Mick envisioned.

Emerald City deserves its place in Sydney’s theatrical canon. It’s a major work capturing the spirit of its time. Nearly 40 years later, it feels both quaint and depressingly accurate.