The River by Jez Butterworth.
Directed by Margaret Thonas. .Assistant Director Kenneth Moraleda Designer Anna
Tregloan. Lighting Designer Damien Cooper. Sound Designer and Composer. Costume
Director Sam Perkins. Stage Manager Jaymii Knierum. Sam Cheng. Intimacy Director
Chloe Dallimore. The Drama Studio. Sydney Opera House. Sydney Theatre Company. March 30 – May 9 2026.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
I first encountered playwright
Jez Butterworth’s The River work at a debut production by Canberra’s Red
Herring Theatre of his Olivier Award winning 1995 comedy, Mojo, inspired by the
infamous gangland criminal twins the Kray brothers. It was with interest that I
travelled to Sydney to see Sydney Theatre Company’s production of, directed by
Margaret Thanos with Miranda Otto, Alex Demetriades and Ewen Leslie. This 2012
Tony Award winning play is a very different kettle of fish from his absurdly
black comedy Mojo. If anything, it is quickly apparent what a uniquely
versatile playwright and wordsmith Butterworth is. Perhaps this is because of
the play’s pervading theme. We are swept along by Love, sometimes bathed in the
euphoria of its bewitchment., or at other times battling its treacherous
current swirling with snags. Butterworth’s writing is vivid in its poetic
imagery, visceral in its portrayal of the human experience and compelling in
his ability to intrigue and mystify. Fact and fiction blur our perception of
what is true and what is false in the relationship that the man (Ewen Leslie)
has with the two women whom he brings to his remote hut on a river’s edge. The
synopsis in the programme describes The River as part love story, part
ghost story and part puzzle. Past, present and future flow through the play in
an eddying pool of mystery as Butterworth unfolds the man’s relationship with
two women, one the practical, grounded current object of his love, played with
forthright sensibility by Otto.
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| The Man (Ewen Leslie) and The Other Woman (Alex Demetriades) |
The Other Woman (Demetriades) is flighty, sensual and a past love who appears, spirit like, during a scene, passing through time, seductive in her red dress. Gradually, Leslie’s Man appears as a fisher of women, casting the line, hooking the catch and luring the prize with poetic words of love, manipulative persuasion and the promise of a gift never before seen by another woman. Underpinning words of love is the man’s siklful scaling and gutting of a seatrout, realistically created by props maker Emily Adinolfi on stage.
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| Ewen Leslie (The Man) and the Fish in The River |
In this moment of horror one wonders whether such a fate would befall the women in this remote location, atmospherically created by designer Anna Tregloan and effectively lit by Lighting designer Damien Cooper. On occasion it exudes the threat of a Bluebeard’s cabin. In full light it can portray a love and intimacy between a man and a woman in the riverbank setting. The forest like effect at the rear of a sparsely furnished setting of a table and chair lends the set an eerie and uneasy mood. Sam Cheng’s modulated composition and sound design provides strikes emotional chords from the loudly percussive to the soothing lyrical embracing the character’s journey through Love. The Love triangle flows like an ever flowing river of discord and harmony and a prevailing suspense that can change the mood in an instant.
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| Woman (Miranda Otto) and Man (Ewen Leslie) |
Director Thanos superbly captures the mood and momentum of Butterworth’s eighty-minute puzzle. Her work with the actors is electric, echoing with personal experience of love’s enigma. She guides her actors along the stream, steering them at times along a swirling current of emotion or navigating moments of intimacy that then can change love’s course with sudden surprise. Thanos and Demetriades express their accounts of experiences that are as volatile as Butterworth’s story upon the stage. I begin to feel that we are witnessing the playwright’s personal admission Love’s inconstancy.
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| Ewen Leslie (The Man) and Alex Demetriades (The Other Woman) |
I left the final matinee of The
River in awe of Butterworth’s talent to play our emotions and personalize
our experiences, teasing us like the bait upon the hook. Are the two women the
fish that got away and is the woman who appears at the end (Mavis Ridgway) a
victim of the Man’s manipulative charm. It remains a haunting prospect that
Sydney Theatre Company’s excellent production of Jez Butterworth’s The River
will not allow to fade.
Photography Daniel Boud
