Girls & Boys (Sydney Theatre Co) ★★★★

Written by Dennis Kelly. State Theatre Company South Australia Production. Sydney Theatre Company. Wharf 1 Theatre. 17 Sep – 1 Nov, 2026.

Is this “incomprehensible violence thing” an integral part of humanity? From mass shootings, to football hooligans, family killers and Viking hordes – is this just part of who we are as a species? As the unnamed narrator in Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys asks us, “how can you understand us without understanding it?”

Justine Clarke plays the unnamed woman at the centre of the story. A working-class Brit who builds a life for herself, busting her way into a media career through sheer bravado and hard wok. She and her unnamed husband are building their own careers from scratch before they have two children – first a young budding architect daughter, and then a rambunctious young son.

But when hard times hit, she is caught surprised by the changes in her husband – is he having an affair? Is he hiding something? From the vantage of this possibly unreliable narrator we try to piece together the story that she only half knows.

You can see why Mitchell Butel wanted to revive this 2023 production of Girls & Boys, returning it to Sydney with an elevation to the STC main stage. This is in many ways a two-hander – Justine Clarke’s dynamic performance shares the stage with Dennis Kelly’s masterful writing. Together they assuredly take our hand and lead us through this exhibition of joy, love and incredible horror. Combined with Butel’s emotionally resonate direction, more directing the flow of energy than the flow of movements, it’s a powerful combination.

But watching Girls & Boys this time I was struck by a story thread I had not really registered before. On previous watches (I saw Girls & Boys first back in 2018, have listened to the audiobook and read the play text since) I was originally caught up in the domestic horror and never heard the commentary about society at large. Perhaps it is because of my very 2026 fears for our rules-based order and societal gains that a new resonance has crept in. This time the discussion of the great things our society has achieved, and the systems we’ve created to subdue our worse impulses, stuck out to me.

“You have never had to kill anyone. You have never had to defend your home, you have never had to flee into the mountains with your family, you have never had to destroy another human life – in what other time in history could that be said?”

And by extension, as these system degrade, or are actively dismantled by those who hate them or those who simply take them for granted, we find ourselves slipping into a more barbarous world. As our narrator concludes, “We didn’t create society for men, we created it to stop men.”

For me the only negative aspect of this production is the design language which, try as I might, I can’t understand in the context of this play. The warm, playful visuals stood at odds with the emotional journey against a set that looked more like a pop-up day care than any domestic space.

And if I may be glib in the face of such heavy subject matter, of all the heinous evils presented in the play the worst by far is the patterned green shirt and marigold trouser combo Justine Clarke is forced to wear for the 1 hour 50 minute duration. Sheer cruelty.

Jokes aside, Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys is a triumphant piece of writing that will challenge and move you. As we get regular reminders of similar crimes in the news, this play has lost none of its bite over the last decade. With a performer like Justine Clarke in the lead, you simply can’t lose. This is one play you definitely must see.