MY BRILLIANT CAREER - The Canberra Theatre

 

Kara Gare as Sybylla Melvyn in Melbourne Theatre Company's production of 
 My Brilliant Career.

Book: Sheridan Harbridge & Dean Bryant – Lyrics: Dean Bryant – Music: Mathew Frank

Director: Anne Louise Sarks – Musical Director: Victoria Falconer

Choreographer: Amy Campbell – Set & Costume Designer: Marg Horwell

Lighting Designer: Matt Scott – Sound Designer: Joy Weng

Presented by Melbourne Theatre Company – Canberra Theatre - 7 to 15^th March 2026

Opening Night performance on March 8^th reviewed by BILL STEPHENS

Kala Gare as Sybylla Melvyn in My Brilliant Career.

How appropriate that Canberra be the first city outside Melbourne to experience performances of this joyous, much-lauded new musical since its Melbourne premiere in 2024, given that in the main street of nearby Queanbeyan is a plaque honouring Miles Franklin whose 1901 novel provided the inspiration for this musical and who lived much of her life in this district.

Happily, it is obvious from the moment the cast of Melbourne Theatre Company’s audacious musical adaptation of My Brilliant Career take the stage, it is clear that they, and the creative team, not only understand Miles Franklin’s fiercely independent heroine, but relish her contradictions.

Sheridan Harbridge and Dean Bryant’s book and lyrics, and Mathew Frank’s music brim with vitality, wit, and a distinctly Australian sense of place. 

Drew Livingston - Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward -Kala Gare - Victoria Falconer - Raj Labade in My Brilliant Career 

 The restless energy of Sybylla Melvyn is captured in an extraordinary central performance by Kala Gare that is as mercurial as it is magnetic. Her command of the stage is remarkable, often addressing the audience directly, one moment tossing of a sardonic quip, the next revealing a flash of vulnerability that makes her journey all the more compelling.

Gare is supported by the original multi-skilled ensemble cast who all play musical instruments, perform Amy Campbell’s clever evocative choreography, as well as bring to life, the multitude of diverse characters who inhabit Sybylla’s world over the years.

Directed with an un-erring eye for visual interest and performance possibilities by Anne Louise Sarks, Raj Labade earned sighs as Harold Beecham, the romantic suitor who almost succeeds in persuading Sybylla to abandon her life’s priorities.

Kala Gare (Sybylla Melvyn) - Raj Labade (Harold Beecham) in My Brilliant Career.

Drew Livingstone, Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward, Ana Mitsikas, Christina O’Neill, Jarrad Payne, Melanie Bird, (replacing original cast member HaNy Lee) as well as musical director, Victoria Falconer, who moves through the show as an ethereal, non-verbal musical muse underlining nuances and heralding changes of mood with her violin, all contribute captivating characterisations, except perhaps for the McSwats , who, while entertaining, definitely belong in cartoon-land.   

Visually, the staging is a delight. Marg Horwell, aided by Matt Scott’s painterly lighting design, cleverly conjures up dusty expanses of the bush, elaborate mansions and ballrooms with a set that shifts seamlessly between pastoral beauty and the claustrophobia of small-town life. Her costumes are equally imaginative, allowing the storytelling to move through years without the need for the actors to leave the stage for costume changes.

Similarly, the tapestry of lilting folk-infused melodies and punchy ensemble numbers that make up Mathew Frank’s tuneful score, together with Dean Bryrant’s perceptive lyrics propel the story forward without ever feeling forced. Particularly memorable are “In the Wrong Key” in which Sybylla pinpoints her own personality and “Prince of a Girl”, her father’s perceptive description of his daughter.

What impresses most is the production’s tonal balance. It honours Franklin’ s century old text, while speaking directly to a contemporary audience, never shying away from the grit beneath the romance. The humour is sharp, the pacing brisk, and the emotional beats land with satisfying precision.

In short, My Brilliant Career is a joyous, intelligent, and deeply Australian musical that celebrates self-determination without sentimentality. It’s the kind of theatre that leaves you walking a little taller, and perhaps like Sybylla herself, a little more determined to write your own story.

Fresh from a sold-out revival season in Melbourne and following its Canberra season, My Brilliant Career moves on to seasons in Sydney (Mar. 21 – April 26) and Wollongong (May 8 – 17).  If it comes your way, don’t miss it.

Karla Gare in My Brilliant Career.

                                                             Photos by Pia Johnson 

   This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW. www.artsreview.com.au

My Brilliant Career - Melbourne Theatre Company

 

 My Brilliant Career, adapted as a musical from the novel by Miles Franklin.  Melbourne Theatre Company at Canberra Theatre Centre, 7 – 15 March, 2026

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night March 8

CREATIVES
Director Anne-Louise Sarks
Musical Director / Additional Music Arrangements Victoria Falconer
Choreographer Amy Campbell
Set & Costume Designer Marg Horwell
Lighting Designer Matt Scott
Orchestrator / Vocal Arranger James Simpson
Sound Designer Joy Weng
Associate Director Miranda Middleton
Associate Set & Costume Designer Savanna Wegman
Assistant Musical Director Drew Livingston

CAST (alphabetical order – Collective Ensemble)
Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward; Melanie Bird; Lincoln Elliott
Victoria Falconer; Kala Gare; Jack Green; Raj Labade; Drew Livingston
Meg McKibbin; Ana Mitsikas; Christina O’Neill; Jarrad Payne

Key acting roles:
Kala Gare as the protagonist Sybylla Melvyn. The ensemble includes Raj Labade (Harry/Peter), Drew Livingston (Father/Uncle Jay-Jay/M’Swat), Ana Mitsikas (Grannie/Rose Jane), and Christina O'Neill (Mother/Aunt Helen/Mrs M'Swat)


The very best theatre happens when the source material is emotionally honest and the writers, directors, designers, choreographers, musicians and actors create an original way to present on stage a work both thoroughly entertaining and true to its source.

This adaptation of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career as music theatre by Melbourne Theatre Company is a wonderful example.  It takes Franklin’s understanding of herself as a woman growing up in 1899, making it available for our young generation in the 21st Century through music, song and dance as the story which Sybylla Melvyn tells us is “about – me!”

In this way, Sybylla – in effect the young Miles Franklin – takes us into her confidence.  As her mother shows her, to see herself in a mirror is to see her external attributes; but it does not reveal her real self.  

Entirely appropriately for our modern concerns about, for example, the destructive effects – especially in girls and young women – of the misuse of imagery on internet social platforms, Sybylla’s search for how to find and, for herself, how to become “someone like me” – very often generating shout out loud comedy – creates for us empathetic depth.  We feel for Sybylla, for Miles, for ourselves as we react to and reflect on their experiences, and so by a kind of osmosis understanding grows.

While writing the original My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin was what we know nowadays as a young adult, just turning 21 as her first novel was published.  Opening night at the musical was full of cheers and whistles, and sighs – not only from the young, though I admit as an octogenarian I only clapped in admiration – standing with everyone for the final ovation.  

To achieve such great theatre, all the performers work as an extraordinary ensemble company, playing out all the characters over time as musicians, dancers, singers, mimes and actors with such precision, in itself a powerful reason to not miss My Brilliant Career – the Musical.

Though, as Sybylla insists, her story will not be a romance, and has no plot, I think it is fair to say that the performances by Kala Gare and Raj Labade as Sybylla and Harry are especially memorable.

It’s exciting to watch; ironic humour abounds; thoughtful on social issues; and emotionally honest.

A brilliant career for Melbourne Theatre Company; a brilliant theatre experience here in Canberra.

Kala Gare as Sybylla 
My Brilliant Career - Melbourne Theatre Company 2026

MARY SAID WHAT MARY SAID ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2026

  

Mary Said What She Said 

Directed by Robert Wilson. With Isabelle Huppert. Text by Darryl Pinckney.Music by Ludovico Einaudi. A production by Theatre de Ville-Paris. Festival Theatre. Adelaide Festival Centre. Adelaide Festival March 6-8 2026.

Credits.  Costumes by Jacques Reynaud. Associate director Charles Chemin. Associate set design. Annick Lavallee-Benny. Associate light design Xavier Baron. Associate costume design Pascale Paume.  Collaboration for Movement Fari Sarantani. Sound design Nick Sagar. Makeup design Sylvie Cailler. Hair design Jocelyne Milazzo. Translation from English Fabrice Scott.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

Isabelle Huppert as Mary Stuart in
Mary Said What She Said

I open this review with a caveat. I do not speak French. I was seated in the fourth row of the Dress Circle, quite a distance away from Isabelle Huppert playing Mary Stuart Queen of Scotland and the Isles. I found it very difficult to read the fast surtitles although there was considerable repetition of historical facts and events and focus at the same time on Huppert’s remarkable performance. Perhaps like some I know I might have been less alienated in the stalls and more unconcerned with close attention to Pinckney’s text as it flashed across the screen.

Having said that,and occasionally choosing to escape the surtitles and focus entirely on the stage, Mary Said What She Said is an extraordinary production. That is hardly surprising given Robert Wilson’s legendary reputation as an experimental director of the avant-garde whose productions envelop the senses and infuse the intellect. Of course, with the legendary Isabelle Huppert as his Mary, Wilson is assured of a tour de force performance and for almost two hours Huppert commands the stage with a performance that galvanizes and commands complete immersion.

A plush red scalloped curtain hangs across the proscenium arch. In the centre of the curtain on a small screen is a film of a dog chasing its tail again and again. At times it stops, staring bewildered out towards the auditorium. And then it begins again, a premonition of what will come as Mary grapples with her demons, her history and her tragic fate. Throughout the performance Darryl Pinckney’s poetic translation is repeated time and time again, as though Mary is besieged by her thoughts, her fears and her unjust fate.

 

The curtain rises on the vast Festival Theatre stage. A silhouetted figure stands facing the steel blue lit cyclorama with a single light beaming out towards the audience. Wilson’s design is enigmatic, inviting an audience to seek meaning. The bright light appears celestial, a gateway to destiny. Ludovico Enaudi’s composition is tempestuous, overpowering as an omen of impending doom. It is operatic, underscoring the drama of the performance and the passion of the text.

Slowly, Huppert turns towards the audience.  Her white face comes into view, the lips part and Mary’s story unfolds in a monologue that tumbles from Mary’s mind, sometimes recounting the events of her life, sometimes confused, abused, betrayed, 

Darryl Pinckney’s text translation is relentless in its poetic account of Mary’s fated life. It is the rousing libretto to Einaudi’s soaring composition. We see Mary through a silhouetted figure against a light that leads her on away from this earthly realm. Her fate is assured. Her destiny still uncertain.

Huppert plays a woman possessed and obsessed. Born in 1542, Mary is crowned Queen of Scotland when she is only one year old. At fifteen she sails to France to be betrothed to the Dauphin and is accompanied by four maids all called Mary, as is Mary’s mother, the Dowager Queen. At the age of 15 Mary is married. What follows is a life of three marriages, plots, intrigue and murders and eventual imprisonment by Queen Elizabeth to prevent any uprising. For eighteen years she is kept in captivity until Elizabeth finally signs the death certificate. She is brutally beheaded in 1587, leaving behind her son James who will one day succeed to the English throne on the death of the Virgin Queen. It is Mary’s ultimate revenge from the grave.

On a bare stage, Huppert inhabits the vast space with magnetic control. Her voice is amplified creating a cavernous echo to her suffering, her betrayal by Mary Fleming and the loyalty of her best friend Mary Beton. Stillness gives her strength. The flailing arms and repetitive movements heighten the turmoil and the pain. Memories of love and happier times sway in her dancing. Huppert’s performance is remarkable. She is in every sense a queen. There is defiance and despair as she reiterates the events and the people that have brought her to her terrible fate.

Finally the flailing ends. The repetitive railing against her fate subsides. Huppert unveils a Mary now resigned to her fate, accepting of her imminent death. There is pause to reflect on Mary’s cruel fate. It is here in the final moments of the play that we may empathize. Huppert’s stylized performance of the fated historical figure is highly representational, a marionette of history’s destiny. Huppert is one possessed by the torments of the mind, an abstraction of her earthly fate. In Wilson’s stylized vision Mary Said What She Said reveals more poignantly the struggle for any woman to claim her rightful place in the world.

 

 

Isabelle Huppert is Mary Stuart in
Mary Said What She Said.

Perhaps this is the enlightenment that collaborative artists Wilson, Huppert, Pinckney and Einaudi have constructed and challenged the audience to see. It is for those who submit themselves to the search for the light to learn and understand what Mary said.He was due to appear and

Robert Wilson never lived to see Mary Said What She Said performed to standing ovations at this year’s Adelaide Festival. He died last year, leaving a legacy that will be a lasting inspiration to theatre makers the world over. Huppert’s performance as Mary Stuart in Mary Said What She Said is a shining testimony to Wilson’s gift to the theatre. The Adelaide Festival performance is a gift to audiences fortunate enough to see this trailblazing director’s work.

Photos by Lucie Jansch

WORKS AND DAYS ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2026

 

Works and Days. 

Coproduction Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d'Europa, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg

with the support of the tax shelter measure of the Belgian federal government via Gallop Tax ShToneelhuis/FC Bergman. The Dunstan Playhouse. Adelaide Festival Centre. Adelaide Festival 2026.

Credits: Direction, scenario, scenography Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Thomas Verstraeten, Marie Vinck. Performers Stef Aerts, Maryam Sserwamukoko, Yorrith De Bakker, Marie Vinck, Gudrun Ghesquiere, Fumiyo Ikeda, Geert Goossens, Gloria Aerts. Musical composition and live performance Joachim Badenhorst, Sean Carpio. Costume design An D'Huys. Light design Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Ken Hioco. Production manager Kristien Borgers.Technical production manager Diederik Suykens. Production Toneelhuis | FC Bergman.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins.

Toneelhuis/FC Bergman from Belgium return to Adelaide with a work inspired by the Greek Poet Hesiod’s original verse of the same title, Works and Days. But in the same way that the company astounded Festival audiences with their iconic The Sheep Song in 2023, Work and Days is also  a non-verbal collection of theatrical imagery that startles, shocks, amazes and paints a portrait of human development that is both prophetic and frightening.  

The audience is introduced to a community of villagers carrying out their daily tasks in the fields. A plough tears up the stage, shocking the audience with the unexpected as pieces of timber are torn from the floor. It is the image of labourers in the field, tilling the soil. A live hen produces an egg as seeds are flung into the earth, ready for a new harvest. The imagery is rural. Blankets flung over actors transform them into animals. An elephant gives birth to a calf. The calf becomes a young girl. The elephant’s carcass releases a naked male body strung up like meat in a butcher’s shop. A maypole appears in the centre of the stage as the frame of a dwelling is lifted into position as a communal gathering place. These are the images of rural peasant life, a world of toil and ritual, of life and death of love and birth. Musicians Joachim Badenhorst and Sean Carpio accompany the action with a composition inspired by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.  In place of a string orchestra, Badenhorst and Carpio have created a sounsdcape for clarinet, saxophone, flute and organ, sometimes recreating Vivaldi’s melodies and at other times improvising and marking the show’s progression from the communal collective in the opening scenes to the fragmentation of community, stripped naked of identity. It is a prophesy of lost humanity. 

 

Life changes.  Wooden slats of bright colours are taken from the earth. A young girl stares at the  multicoloured trees of wood circling and moving like members of a secret coven. The world of the village  vanishes as a steam engine moves onto the stage adorned with naked bodies in a frieze of adoration.  Steam billows through the stage as an industrial world displaces the agrarian lives of the people in the village. A naked man rides the steam engine like a bronco urging it to do his will. The naked frieze writhes slowly in idolatory. The new age becomes the altar of their worship.

At the front of the stage a lone old woman pulls on the plough as rain falls. She alone flails against the passage of time and progress. She tugs in vain until she falls with a scream. As if by magic the lights come up to reveal  a perfectly inlaid mosaic of colour,casting aside the drab grey of the past to present  a new age. She moves onto the mosaic of coloured wood strewn with the pure beauty of the naked body. She sits a solitary  relic of a faded past, disoriented in a modern world. A robotic dog enters. It leaps at the old woman and pineapples explode from beneath the floor. Slats of wood fling into the air, disturbing the symmetry and order of the inlaid floor. A new world erupts about her. Her past is a forgotten time. Her future an uncertain world.

Toonelhuis’s imagery is startling in its originality. Each image is a cameo, perfectly designed, superbly crafted, evocatively underscored by Badenhorst and Carpio’s musical responses and resonating with meaning. It may be a lament for a lost age or an alluring promise of the new. However one may interpret the imagery and its significance in a modern world, Toonelhuis/FC Bergman’s production of Work and Days stuns with its inventiveness, its visual and musical artistry, and its power to provoke thought and excite the imagination. It is presented by a remarkable ensemble, performing with absolute precision and  economy  of purpose and action.  No action is superfluous to the theme. Every moment evokes a response. Work and Days needs no words.  The power of the image to tell a story will live in the memory long after leaving the theatre.

Photos by Kurt Van der Elst

 

 

SERENADE FROM THE SEWER TIGER LILLIES ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2026

 

 

Serenade from the Sewer 

The Tiger Lillies. Martyn Jacques. Adrian Stout, Budi Butenop. Her Majesty’s Theatre. Adelaide Festival. March 5-6

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

Britain’s operatic punk cabaret The Tiger Lillies makes a welcome and long-awaited return to Adelaide with their unique show Serenades from the Sewer. With grotesque faces as though painted on by Otto Dix and strolling onto the stage like escapees from Berlin prewar cabaret, lead singer/songwriter Martyn Jacques and fellow anarchists Adrian Stout and Budi Butenop launch straight into Cold Night in Soho . Jacques recalls his life above a strip joint in Soho where junkie girl of the night Tiger Lily lay dead in the gutter. It is the world of prostitutes and pimps, of junkies high on heroin, criminals and conmen. There is no chat, no explanation. The lyrics speak for themselves. The haunting sound of Jacques’ accordion, the throb of Stout’s double bass and the punctuating beat of Butenop’s drumming conjure the images of the outcasts of society, the relics of violence and despair, the flotsam and jetsum of society’s discards. Theirs is the music and song of the Balkan gypsies, deep in their defiant despondency or the resigned voices of the Left Bank anarchists. Kurt Weil meets Jacques Brel in a serenade to the sewers where survival is the best that one can hope for.

From the drug addiction of Heroin to the gloomy nihilism of Disease The Tiger Lillies lace their show with bitter irony – You’re just the same as me. You’re just a disease. Jacques coaxes his audience on. It’s all so stupid. “Stupid stupid stupid” chant the audience. The inevitability of death thunders on in an astounding drum solo by Butenop with percussion and whistle. It is hypnotic, inescapable and a dark foreboding on the inevitability of death. This is the eerie world of The Tiger Lillies, uncompromising in its prophetic mockery. Stout accompanies, coaxing the inevitable destiny with the eerie sounds of the theremin and the wail of the musical saw. It is the sound of the street musicians railing against the cruelty of life’s unjust circumstance. It is Death’s harbinger. The grimacing ghoulish faces of the trio coax the audience “Are you happy?” “Happy” they repeat as Butenop waves the words.

Two encores to a cheering crowd end their show. Jacques on piano utters the final words, F**k Putin, and The Tiger Lillies leave the stage. No words are needed. Their lyrics leave a lasting admonition. Their cabaret leaves a bitter taste of recrimination, subversive and anarchic. And yet I felt the irony of the elegant surroundings of Her Majesty’s Theatre. Their roots are in the streets of Soho and the haunts of Mac the Knife.  Last night their songs took root in the minds and hearts of their audience.  Serenade from the Sewer is The Tiger Lillies’ unforgettable last laugh at life’s cruel irony. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

POV ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2026

 

POV

Text by Mark Rogers Directed by Solomon Thomas Performers: Grace Tione. Actors for this performance Ashton Malcolm and Stephen Tongan.  Creative Team:   Malcolm Whittaker Steve Wilson-Alexander Carly Young Sound Designer Ashley Bundang Creative Producer Malcolm Whittaker Administration Intimate Spectacle Images Taylah Chapman. Re: group performance collective. Space Theatre. Adelaide Festival Centre. Adelaide Festival Wednesday March 4 – Sunday March 8 2026

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

Photo by Andrew Beveridge of an earlier performance

Two actors sit on chairs at the rear of the stage. In front of them is a video camera on a track. The actors smile and wave at the schoolchildren who are attending the school matinee with the general public. Grace Tione enters to introduce herself as eleven year old Bub from Gadigal land. She introduces Ashton Malcolm and Stephen Tongan, actors performing on Kaurna country. Each night two different actors will play Bub’s Mum and Dad. Bub is an aspiring documentary film maker, who is making a film about her family and specifically her mother’s upcoming ceramics exhibition. Bub is director of the film, guiding the unrehearsed actors through their parts by feeding them their lines, giving them scripts to read or pointing them to the text on screens. The two actors respond instantly playing out their adult roles as Bub films them in a variety of short sequences, urging them to respond immediately to the text. Tione’s performance is confident and immensely appealing. Her commands are assured and controlled. Her authority struck a funny note for the school audience who responded enthusiastically to a young child in control. Tongan and Malcolm played out their parental roles with a keen appreciation of Mark Gordon’s naturalistic text.

Ashton Malcolm plays Mum in the school matinee of POV

As the true purpose of the piece begins to emerge, it becomes obvious that the onstage filmmaking experiment played out by the three actors reveals a more serious situation. The camera track becomes a railway line where Bub will goto deal with her problems and insecurities. It becomes a metaphor for the parents’ inability to understand the child or deal with the circumstances of her inability to find solutions to her problems. To seek out answers she turns to her mentor Werner Herzog and his documentaries. The carer, seated on the side of the theatre announces a six minute break during which Tione invites the audience to google Werner Herzog quotes and read them aloud.  Audience members are quick to respond. “Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness”

The tone of the work takes a darker turn as Bub’s mother sinks into a depression that Bub does not fully understand. The filming stops while Bub initiates a role reversal in order to reveal the cause of the mother’s confinement to her bed. The scene is repetitive and the lines keep being said over and over by the three actors in their different roles. It would have been more revealing if each reversal of role introduced a different perspective to reach for a solution to the condition. Ultimately however Bub discovers the answer through Herzog and the support of her parents. The carer announces that as many as one in five families will face a mental health illness within the family. It is a sober statistic that makes re: group performance collective’s production all the more important.

Gordon’s text and Solomon Thomas’s direction reveal an irony that theatre can fulfil its role to create change with more visceral impact than film in a digital age. POV’s use of onstage filming and spontaneous performance gives this production an immediacy and a vitality that is at times bursting with humour and at other times moving in its pathos. The company avoids the didactic, rather conveying its message in such a way as to fully engage an audience. We laugh and we cry and as Bub reveals the answer that she has sought we too are able to understand. That is the power of POV.

The photos in this review are from an earlier performance and are not of Grace Tione, Ashton Malcom or Stephen Tongan. Photos are taken by Andrew Beveridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I SWEAR

Written and Directed by Kirk Jones

Transmission Films

In cinemas from March 26

 

Reviewed by Len Power 5 March 2026

 

Based on the life of John Davidson, a Scottish man with severe Tourette Syndrome, “I Swear” is often fiercely funny but also warm-hearted.

Once regarded as a rare and bizarre syndrome, Tourette’s has been associated with the utterance of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks. It is no longer considered rare.

John Davidson first displays Tourette’s in adolescence in the early 1980s. Society’s ignorance of the condition at the time causes conflict at home as well as punishment by teachers and the police. Only a local mental health nurse, Dottie, seems prepared to offer help and solace, while an elderly caretaker at a community centre, Tommy, provides John with a job.

While there are setbacks, John is eventually able to offer Tourette’s workshops, giving talks to schools and to the police. His work is ultimately recognized with an MBE award presented by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.

Director and writer of the screenplay, Kirk Jones, bluntly presents the issues faced by Davidson from youth to manhood without resorting to sentiment. He is aided by an excellent cast of actors. Robert Aramayo plays the elder John Davidson in a standout performance that won him a 2025 BAFTA Award. Scott Ellis Watson plays the younger Davidson in an impressive debut performance. There is strong support from Maxine Peake as the mental nurse, Dottie, and Peter Mullan as the elderly caretaker, Tommy.

In the film, it is made clear that people do not know enough about Tourette’s. It ultimately shows that education, understanding and acceptance are essential to enable people living with the condition to have normal lives.

The journey taken with John Davidson is at times horrifying and confronting but it is also unexpectedly funny. This is a strongly moving and optimistic film. “I Swear” will surely be one of the most memorable films of the year.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/zhRgPCUKFiw