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Written by David Harrower. HER Productions. KXT on Broadway. 25 Jun – 5 Jul, 2025.

David Harrower’s acclaimed, intense 2005 play, Blackbird, won’t be for everyone. It’s a complex tale of child sexual abuse that plunges into murky emotional waters. I understand why performers are drawn to it, but some audiences may find it difficult to watch.

Una (Charlotte De Wit) has ambushed Ray (Phil McGrath) at his workplace. They haven’t seen each other in 15 years. Ray has moved on, changed his name, and started a new life. Una, however, remains fixated on their shared past, obsessing over details he wants to leave behind. When she was only 12, Ray had sex with her. Now, after he served a prison sentence, she is forcing him to confront the past once again.

Harrower’s script is a knotty affair, exploring the grey areas of a situation many see as simply black and white. While Ray’s criminality is never in doubt, his motivations—and our assumptions—are questioned. Una, too, is a tangle of conflicting impulses, which steer the story through unexpected twists. It’s a smart, well-structured narrative, and it’s easy to see why it has been praised across Europe and America.

Although the play is relatively short (just 75 minutes) it can feel longer. This is partly due to the static staging, set in a bland, generic office common room, and partly because of the heavy subject matter. Despite the script’s dynamism, this production struggles to capture its nuance. The performances and direction lack the subtlety needed to fully reveal the humanity of these psychologically complex characters. Both are deeply scarred by their pasts, wrestling with confusing and conflicting desires. Some moments in the third act seem designed merely to shock and are telegraphed too far in advance.

Nonetheless, this is powerful material that dares to get messy and push the audience into uncomfortable territory. It’s a bold script that rewards engagement, even if this particular production doesn’t quite reach the heights of the text.

Written by Thomas Eccleshare. Clock & Spiel Productions. Flight Path Theatre. 25 Jun – 5 Jul, 2025.

Parenting is hard. But what if you could build the perfect child from scratch and program it as you go? Instructions for Correct Assembly imagines a world of IKEA-style convenience, where artificial offspring are delivered flat-packed and ready to construct. Offering a fresh lens on the challenges of real-life parenting it makes you wonder, what if humans were as easy to reprogram as machines?

Hari (Nick Curnow) is thrilled to share his latest impulse buy with his wife, Max (Jane Wallace). A chronic DIY enthusiast, he’s ordered a top of the line android S.O.N. named Jån (Ben Chapple), to build in the garage. But this isn’t just another gadget. Hari and Max have styled Jån to look uncannily like their deceased son, Nick. And soon they realise Jån, just like Nick, is far harder to program than expected.

The best science fiction holds up a mirror to our world, reflecting our humanity through the strange and unfamiliar, whether it’s Star Trek, Black Mirror, or Severance. Instructions for Correct Assembly turns that mirror on family life, exploring the tension and tenderness of close relationships and the desire to perfect what can’t be controlled.

As we discover through flashbacks, for this family things fell apart when Nick went to university and started using drugs. It was a cycle they could never break, but in Jån they see a way to fill the gap in their lives and somehow undo the errors of the past.

Eccleshare’s script, relocated from the UK to Australia, is delivered by a strong cast—most notably Ben Chapple, whose dual performance as Jån and Nick is compelling. By giving Jån a slightly more childlike tone (without going full robot), Chapple makes the distinction between the two characters clear, despite minimal changes in appearance.

Curnow and Wallace carry much of the emotional weight as grieving parents striving for a second chance. Their mission—to correct past mistakes by raising a flawless replica of their son—adds depth and poignancy to a plot that sometimes feels overstated or stretched.

They’re supported by David Allsopp, Jacki Mison, and Kyra Belford-Thomas as well-meaning family friends (and subtle social rivals). Their high-achieving daughter, Amy (Belford-Thomas), becomes an unintentional source of pressure for Hari and Max.

While the premise is clever and full of potential, the writing often feels unfocused with scenes that struggle to get to the heart of the matter. A run of very short, early scenes, broken up by lengthy blackouts & set changes, disrupts the pacing. Jokes are repeated and at times, I found myself wondering, “Would an android really say that?” do the degree that it started to pull me out of the emotional drama. Instructions for Correct Assembly takes a bit too long to find its rhythm, and then doesn’t quite know when to stop. The final few scenes blur the message rather than sharpen it.

Still, the heart of this production lies in three excellent central performances. Curnow, Wallace, and Chapple bring warmth and humanity to a story built on artificial parts. Their final scene together is quietly devastating.

Written by William Shakespeare. Bell Shakespeare. Neilson Nutshell. 20 Jun – 19 Jul, 2025.

Bell Shakespeare strikes gold with their timely staging of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, only the second time it has been produced in the company’s history.

Rome is in turmoil as famine grips the republic, and the upper-class patricians and working-class plebeians are turning on each other. Meanwhile, a neighbouring tribe, the Volscians, is rising up against Rome. Into the fray steps war general Caius Martius (Hazem Shammas). After turning back the Volscians, he is renamed Coriolanus, after the Volscian city of Corioli that he captures. The patricians urge him to run for consul, but to win the votes he must gain favour with the plebeians whom he openly despises. When two plebeian tribunes, Brutus (Marco Chiappi) and Sicinius (Matilda Ridgway), stir up the people against him and conspire to have him exiled, Coriolanus is enraged. Turning his fury on Rome, he joins forces with the very Volscians he once defeated to mount an attack on the city.

While Coriolanus may be a relative stranger to Australian stages, it’s received considerable attention in the UK, with recent major productions starring Tom Hiddleston and David Oyelowo — both critically acclaimed. So it makes sense that Bell Shakespeare has spiced up their season with this bloody political drama. The rise of overly emotional autocrats in the real world certainly doesn’t hurt either.

You know you’re in safe hands with Shakespeare’s text when the likes of Peter Carroll (as elder patrician Menenius), Brigid Zengeni (as Coriolanus’ mother Volumnia), and Marco Chiappi (as tribune Brutus) take the stage. With a cast this strong — including Anthony Taufa, Suzannah McDonald, Septimus Caton, Gareth Reeves and Jules Billington — Shammas has the space to make Coriolanus a deeply unlikeable protagonist we can’t wait to see fail.

There’s no love lost for the haughty patrician class who seek to push and manipulate the people, but things aren’t as cut and dried as good versus evil. Carroll’s Menenius delivers withering lines about the rabble-rousing tribunes, as both sides wield populism in a bid for control. This morally murky play offers no admirable heroes — even if you sympathise with the plebeians, you’ll still shake your head at their giddy overreach.

Peter Evans directs this traverse production as a constantly shifting balance of control. The simple set features a moving platform the cast slides up and down the space, adding dynamic movement and weight. Location names are projected onto the floor in animated text transitions, filling the room with motion even when the stage stands still.

But don’t assume this is a Shakespearean tragedy full of doom and gloom. While, yes, there are plenty of deaths, Evans and the cast find moments of levity and comedy. Jules Billington opens the show with a brisk pre-show talk and Acknowledgement of Country that is both educational and inviting.

If I had to pick a fault, the only moment that didn’t quite ring true for me was [spoiler alert, BTW] Coriolanus’ eleventh-hour change of heart. I just didn’t buy that he cared enough about his wife and mother to be swayed from his prideful anger.

After a few years of relying on the big-hitting classics, it’s refreshing to see Bell Shakespeare bringing us one of the Bard’s lesser-staged works. While I could happily go a few years without seeing another Hamlet, Macbeth, or Romeo & Juliet, I definitely want more of these relative rarities.