IF WE GOT SOME MORE COCAINE I COULD SHOW YOU HOW I LOVE YOU - ACT Hub.

Joshua James (Casey) - Robert Kjellgren (Michael) in the ACT Hub production of
 "If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You"

 

Written by John O’Donovan – Directed by Joel Horwood

Lighting Design by Lachlan Houen – Sound Design by Neville Pye

Costume Design by Winsome Ogilvie – Set Design by Isaac Reilly & Joel Horwood

Presented by Everyman Theatre Company, ACT Hub from 14^th – 24^th May, 2025.

Performance on 22^nd May reviewed by BILL STEPHENS

Despite its cumbersome, off-putting title, Irish playwright, John O’Donovan’s first full-length play turns out to be a compelling 90-minute drama about two young gay men struggling with their feelings for each other in a situation which threatens to ruin both their lives.

Set in the Irish town of Ennis, the entire play takes place on the rooftop of a house, where the pair, Mikey and Casey, find themselves trapped in their effort to elude pursuing police following their botched robbery of a local petrol station.

Although the robbery didn’t yield much in cash it did provide them with a considerable stash of cocaine which they planned to dispose of at a party they are meant to be attending that night.

Mikey is the older of the two. The product of a difficult upbringing, he’s outwardly sure of himself and flaunts his sexuality as a badge of honour.  Although he’s been on the receiving end of small-town gossip, both verbal and physical, he’s learned to use his athletic prowess to attract bullies with whom he deals savagely.

English, and still closeted, but with a similar background to Mikey, teenager Casey is much less willing to declare his sexuality, particularly to his homophobic stepfather, with whom he and his mother have fled London to settle in Ennis.  Still not entirely comfortable in the erratic behaviour of Mikey, Casey is also inhibited by a secret he has been keeping from him. 

While they wait for an opportunity to escape from the roof, the pair pass the time in conversation. At first flippant and flirty, but as the night becomes colder, the conversation becomes more intense as they begin to help themselves to the cocaine stash in an effort to keep warm.

As their conversation leads them towards exploring previously unshared truths about their backgrounds and mutual attraction, they surprise themselves by realising and declaring the depth of their feelings for each other.  

Joshua James (Casey) - Robert Kjellgren (Mikey) in
"If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You"

Although there is no physical violence on stage, there are plenty of graphic descriptions of it in O’ Donovan’s hard-hitting script with its appropriately forthright dialogue riddled with expletives and delivered with confidence, commitment and unexpected tenderness by Robert Kjellgren and Joshua James as Mikey and Casey.

Kjellgren and James make a compelling duo in this fine production for which Joel Horwood, fresh from his much-admired production of “Sweet Charity” for Free Rain Theatre, again demonstrates his assured directorial skills with an admirably restrained production.

Horwood’s attention to dynamic stage blocking, contrasted with masterful use of stillness, avoids any hint of the conversations between the protagonists becoming static.  He also capitalises on the physical and temperamental differences of his actors to achieve astonishingly nuanced and authentic performances.

Astute collaboration with his designers, Isaac Reilly for the realistic rooftop setting, allowed him to create several heart-stopping moments. Lachlan Houen’s subtle lighting design successfully captured the atmosphere of a chill winter night, while Winsome Ogilvie’s understated costume design together with Neville Pye’s atmospheric sound design all combined to add authenticity to the world of Mikey and Casey.

Robert Kjellgren (Mikey) - Joshua James (Casey) in 
"If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You"

This debut play by John O’Donovan earned him a $10,000 Award from London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2016. It was given its first Australian production by the Green Door Theatre Company in Sydney in 2019 and it has received several Australian productions since.

Everyman Theatre has done the playwright and his play proud with this arresting   production which further enhances the reputation of ACT Hub for presenting excellent productions of challenging and important theatre.   

                                       Photos by Ben Appleton - Photox Canberra.

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

 

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS - Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse.

The ensemble cast on the set of "The Dictionary of Lost Words".

Adapted by Verity Laughton from the novel by Pip Williams.

Directed by Jessica Arthur – Set Design by Jonathon Oxlade

Costumes designed by Ailsa Paterson – Lighting Design by Trent Suidgeest

Composer & Sound Designer – Max Lyandvert

Performed by Kathryn Adams, Arkia Ashraf, Ksenja Logos, Brian Meegan, Johnny Nasser, Shannen Alyce Quan, James Smith, Angela Nica Sullen.

Presented by the Canberra Theatre Centre in association with Sydney Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia and Creative Australia.

Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse, May 15- 24^th, 2025.

Performance on May 21^st reviewed by BILL STEPHENS

Johnny Nasser (as Esme's Father) - Shannen Alyce Quan (as young Esme) in
 "The Dictionary of Lost Words"

Verity Laughton’s sumptuous stage adaptation of the award-winning debut novel by Australian writer, Pip Williams, is enjoying a sold-out season in Canberra.

The epic play follows the life of Esme Nicoll, portrayed by Shannen Alyce Quan, who is first met as a precocious four-year old who spends her days playing under the desk of her father, (Johnny Nasser), in a Scriptorium, where he and a team of lexicographers are busy gathering words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary.

Esme becomes fascinated with words, particularly those discarded on slips of paper by the male lexicographers as irrelevant. The realisation, when questioning the meaning of one of those discarded words, ‘bondmaid’, along with many other of the words in her collection, had female connotations, prompts Esme to set about compiling her own ‘Dictionary of Lost Words”.  

Kathryn Adams (as Lizzie) - Shannen Alyce Quan (as adult Esme) 

 

Those attracted by the opportunity of seeing favourite characters from the novel brought to life by talented actors, are unlikely to be disappointed.  The myriad of characters required to tell the story, are created by just 8 actors, who, with the exception of Shannen Alyce Quan, who plays the central character, Esme Nicoll, from a four-year-old through to adulthood, manage, with the assistance of excellent costumes and wigs designed by Ailsa Paterson, to populate the stage with creative and charming characterisations.

But despite their excellent efforts, for those who haven’t read the novel, deprived of a printed program to help identify the various characters, the experience of keeping up with the numerous plot twists of the epic story, may prove exhausting.

Shannen Alyce Quan (as Esme) and James Smith (as Bill) in "The Dictionary of Lost Words"

Reported as having worked closely with Pip Williams to create her adaptation, Laughton has fallen into the trap of not distinguishing the wood from the trees by including too many superfluous sub-plots from the novel and creating too many characters who are not given sufficient stage time to make an impact on or connect with the audience.

Although these details might have been fascinating in the novel, despite clever directorial flourishes by director, Jessica Arthur in creating many lovely moments, many potentially interesting details are not explored sufficiently in the play, and therefore detract from the main focus, which is the creation of Esme’s personal dictionary.

Even Jonathan Oxlade’s remarkable multi-layered setting, enhanced by projected timelines, dot-points and artful video decorations by Trent Suidgeest, felt overpowering and intrusive in those scenes not located within the Scriptorium. 

Therefore, despite the obvious talent, imagination and creativity lavished on this production, the meandering nature of Williams’ novel has not responded well as a stage production.  

However, as the rights to Williams’s novel have been purchased for presentation as a television series, perhaps the illusive nature of “The Dictionary of Lost Words” will be more comfortably realised in that medium.

 

                                                      Images by Prudence Upton.

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

IF WE GOT SOME MORE COCAINE I COULD SHOW HOW I LOVE YOU

 

If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You  by John O’Donovan.

Directed by Joel Horwood. Produced by Jarrad West and Nikki Fitzgerald.  Jarrad West & Nikki Fitzgerald.  Set design Isaac Reilly. Sound design Neville Pye. Lighting design Lachlan Houen. Costume design Winsome Ogilvie. May 14-24. 2025 Bookings: (02)62108748

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

Joshua James as Casey and Robert Kjellgren as
Mikey in If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could
Show How I Love Yoi

John O’Donovan’s debut play If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You echoes with the authenticity of personal experience. This could be because of director Joel Horwood’s detailed attention to the moments of panic, humour, conflict and love that he has carefully and imaginatively elicited from O’Donovan‘s text. It may be because of the thoroughly credible performance of the two young actors Joshua James as Casey and Robert Kjellgren as Mikey, who give such riveting and convincing performances as the two burglars, facing capture on the one hand, personal truths and admission of their true love on the other. It may also be because playwright O’Donovan has diligently observed Aristotle’s Unities. The unity of time is a few hours late at night on Halloween. The unity of place is the roof of Casey’s house. The unity of action is the developing relationship between the two young men as they reveal their predicament and the confession of their feelings for one another.

 Aristotle’s Unities provide a gripping focus to the production. In the intimate setting of the ACT HUB theatre the audience is compellingly drawn into the ninety minute play without the distraction of changing scenes, subplots or an interval. From the scrambling fearful clambering onto the roof at the start the audience is conscious of immediate drama, leavened slightly by Casey’s clown mask to disguise his face. This is a quirky romantic drama. It is also a telling social documentary about dysfunctional families and the devastating impact on the lives and hopes and dreams of Irish youth.

 

Horwood’s casting of Joshua James as the young 18 year old whose house they have burgled after an earlier bungled theft of a petrol station and Robert Kjellgren as the older, more experienced delinquent is inspired. James and Kjellgren give thoroughly convincing performances sensitively and at times explosively orchestrated by Horwood. James and Kjellgren are two of the finest young actors I have seen on the Canberra stage and I urge you to see their performances before they are certain to pursue a bright career in the theatre. James plays a London youth feeling alienated in the small Irish village and battling the abuse of his mother’s drug- dealing lover. Casey is more sensitive than the larrikin Mikey, whose rebellious and defiant nature disguises a vulnerability and need for love. It is Mikey who eventually helps Casey to admit to Mikey and to himself his homosexuality. Horwood directs these tender moments with loving appreciation of the nature of true love.

O’Donovan’s play exhibits an honesty that makes the circumstance that Casey and Mikey find themselves in entirely believable. At times we laugh at their naivety and innocence. At other times we are moved to empathise with their plight and their compulsion to be true to their feelings. Everyman Theatre has once again produced a piece of theatre that invites us to witness the human condition and consider our own place in the world.

 I close with a confession. On opening night I had difficulty understanding the text, partly because of the accents and partly because of my inability to distinguish the words. Fortunately I resolved to return and had no such trouble apart from some difficulty at times with Kjellgren’s Irish brogue. Independent theatre struggles at time with short rehearsal periods and my return affirmed the fact that the actors’ clarity of text and familiarity of playing had evolved into a first rate performance of O’Donovan’s hilarious and tender account of youthful gay love. This is a production well worth a visit.

Photos by Ben Appleton - Photox

 

 

Stilleven

Visual Art Exhibition Review | Brian Rope

Stilleven I Rose-Mary Faulkner

ANCA Gallery I 14 May – 1 June 2025

A decal is “a plastic, cloth, paper, or ceramic substrate that has printed on it a pattern or image that can be moved to another surface upon contact, usually with the aid of heat or water.” Rose-Mary Faulkner transfers images onto kiln formed glass. She layers several related images before further manipulating the surface and form through multiple fusing or cold working. This expands the imagery beyond the original photograph as the transparency of glass enhances layering for the purpose of depth and overlapping. 

Rose-Mary Faulkner, Six oranges and a Saturday morning ritual, 2024,
kiln formed glass with decals, 30 x 20 x 1cm.

Stilleven exhibits works by glass artist Faulkner, considering connections to places and objects as both self-portraiture and representative of lived experience and narrative. Softly focused compositions of domestic settings form an avenue to explore dynamics of the absence and presence of people and bodies, connection to environments we embody and the way objects can exist as metaphors.

Domesticity, and artworks depicting inanimate objects found in domestic situations, are domains that have historically been disregarded. The Dutch-origin term "stilleven" means inanimate objects. However, disguised symbolism means domestic objects can be extremely significant revealing the narrative of people's lives, bearing witness to time and change. That is why many of us value, and display in our own homes, precious objects inherited from our forebears.

Sadly, many still consider domestic tasks a domain for women only. This exhibition examines the familiarity and femininity of these topics as ones that possess significance, story, and profound meaning. Faulkner illustrates what is simultaneously familiar, difficult, and valuable amidst the subtle rhythms of everyday.

One particularly delightful work, Snowdon (a study) is a diptych about a much-loved farm house which, I believe, has been in the artist’s family for many generations.

Rose-Mary Faulkner, Snowdon (a study), 2023, kiln formed glass with decals.

Faulkner is based in Australia’s national capital, Canberra. She graduated from the Australian National University School of Art & Design, Glass Workshop, with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2015 and then with first class honours in 2016. Since then, her work has been exhibited widely - in Australia, Berlin, America and Japan. It has been acquired for the Wagga Wagga National Art Glass Gallery collection. The artist works as an arts educator and creates art at Canberra Glassworks and in her home studio which she shares with her partner and glass artist, Rob Schwartz.

In 2018 Faulkner won the National Emerging Art Glass Prize (Wagga Wagga) and spent six weeks at Northlands Creative in Lybster, Scotland, taking part in intensive classes. The same year she held her first solo exhibition, with a body of work that developed from the processes and ideas she had explored in her honours year. In 2019, she was a finalist in the inaugural Klaus Moje Glass Award (Canberra Glassworks). 

For me the most interesting piece in the show is an artwork comprising 32 separate still life compositions gathered from women in her extended family and artists network of friends. Each contributor provided photographs of objects or spaces in their own homes which Faulkner has fused into glass. The images are from women who range in age from 20 to 89. They live in Australia, America and the United Kingdom. The catalogue describes the collection of pieces as a kind of still life portraiture. This fabulous artwork is a created composition revealing a great deal about women’s experiences despite (or because of) the contents being domestic.

Rose-Mary Faulkner, three of the 32 works in Tending (quiet testimonies from homes), 2025 – Kilnformed glass with decals, dimensions variable (installation images by Brian Rope)

There are also a number of works featuring bent glass forms which, again, are about inanimate objects.

Rose-Mary Faulkner, Two vessels in light, 2024, hand bent neon with argon mercury gas, dimensions variable. 

The exhibition essay by Dr Jacqueline Bradley is a beautifully written piece, well worth reading in conjunction with a visit to the exhibition. Bradley speaks of Faulkner’s “deep consideration of the still life genre, shifting between the formal and symbolic, the private and personal.”

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

RIVERSONG

The Resonants choir

Helen Swan, conductor

Gandel Atrium National Museum of Australia May 17

 

Reviewed by Len Power

 

The fate of rivers and the fate of people are inseparable. In a tribute to the spirit and strength of our rivers, Canberra choir, The Resonants, performed a program of songs that captured the story of our rivers.

Organised by the Australian River Restoration Centre, a charity restoring rivers and empowering others to do the same, this was a fund-raising concert for the long-term future of our rivers.

The Resonants choir, an independent, non-profit ensemble of young professionals and university students, was formed in 1990 by music director, Helen Swan. They have been crowned ABC Choir of the Year, recorded four CDs, participated in multiple Australian National Eisteddfods and the Canberra International Music Festival. Conductor, Helen Swan, is a well-known Canberra choral conductor, musician, music educator and opera singer.

Resonants choir

Introduced by award-winning ABC journalist, Alex Sloan, the evening commenced with a Welcome to Country by Aunty Violet Sheridan, a Ngunnawal Elder. She gave a passionate, sincere and down-to-earth welcome that was especially meaningful for the occasion.

The first act of the concert, sub-titled The Spirit Of The River, commenced with the choir singing The Spheres by Norwegian composer, Ola Gjelio. This haunting work evoked a sense of timelessness. The cavernous Gandel Atrium, with its resonant acoustic, was the perfect place to hear it.

Helen Swan, conductor

Six other works were presented in the first act including a dramatic This Is Our Home by Paul Stanhope, The River by Coco Love Alcorn in a beautiful arrangement by Rachel Hore, and a memorable arrangement by Ruth Kilpatrick of Waltzing Matilda which took the familiar melody and added rich harmonies with an Aboriginal-inspired chant.

The second act of the concert, subtitled Renewal and Resilience, commenced with the premiere of The Whisper of the Dying Stream, a new work by Sydney-based composer, Sophie Van Dijk. It was conducted by Kylie Van Dijk. It was a sombre, melodious and appealing work that was given a fine performance by the choir.

Other works presented included Weathermakers, composed in 2016 by Kirsten Duncan, a member of The Resonants choir, Hope There Is, a sublime setting by Clare MacLean of Oodgeroo Nunuccal’s poem, Hope, a haunting arrangement by James Erb of the American folk song, Shenandoah, and Steve Zegree’s arrangement of Henry Mancini’s Moon River. The concert concluded with Andy Beck’s Riversong.

This impressively skilful choir sang mostly a capella and were accompanied on various songs by pianist, Emily Luong, Ben O’Loughlin, double bass and Tom Chalker, percussionist.

The video projections that accompanied each song were particularly well-chosen and the atrium was illuminated with changing light patterns that added to the atmosphere of this fine concert given in aid of a worthy cause.

 

Photos by Dalice Trost

This review was first published by Canberra CityNews digital edition on 18 May 2025.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

 

 

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS

 

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. Adapted for the stage by Verity Laughton.

Directed by Jessica Arthur. Set designer Jonathon Oxlade. Costume designer Ailsa Paterson. Composer and sound designer Max Lyandvert.Lighting designer Trent Suidgeest. Assistant Director Shannon Rush. Cast: Kathryn Adams, Arkia Ashraf, Ksenja Logos, Brian Meegan, Johnny Nasser, Angela Nica Sullen, Shannen Alyce Quan and James Smith. The Playhouse. Canberra Theatre. May 15-24 2025. Bookings 62752700.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

 

 You do not need to have read Pip Williams’s enormously successful The Dictionary of Lost Words to fully appreciate and be rapt in Verity Laughton’s spellbinding adaptation. I sat absorbed in Williams’s story of the wonder of words and her ingenious concept to view the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary through the prism of the magic of words and their meanings as seen by the play’s protagonist Esme Nicoll. Esme is the daughter of Harry Nicoll, a lexicographer on Dr. James Murray’s team to record all the words of the English language. Widower Nicoll brings his daughter to the Scriptorium or "Scrippy", a transformed garden shed at the back of Murray’s residence in Oxford where Esme waits under a table while her father and the team of lexicographers and copyists undertake the enormous task of cataloguing and sorting the words on postcard sized paper under their alphabetical letters. One day a card falls to the floor and is quickly retrieved by Esme. Significantly the word is Bondmaid referring to slavery and a woman’s lot in life to serve until death. And so begins the curious four year old’s quest to discover and uncover words pertaining to women that have been lost, overlooked and discarded from the Oxford English Dictionary. What follows is Esme’s quest for identity and meaning through the words that she discovers and stores in a chest belonging to Murray’s maid Lizzie Lester.

Shannen Alyce Quan as Esme Nicholls

 Laughton has skilfully condensed Williams’s epic story into an engrossing and fascinating theatrical account, not only of the nature of language and its different meanings but of the woman’s place in that recording and the differences between men and women and how the words pertain to their experience. In adapting The Dictionary of Lost Words and realizing the book as a work for the theatre, Laughton and director Jessica Arthur have faithfully represented and embellished author Williams’s intent to place the woman’s experience at the very heart of her novel. In a male dominated society of the Victorian era in which the creation of the first English dictionary was defined by the older white males, the character of Esme is not only strikingly illuminating but vital to understand the differences and the similarities that exist between men and women and therefore the different ways in which the use of the language defines gender. We see Esme grow from an insatiably curious and highly intelligent four year old to a teenager experiencing the shock of a first period to a grown womn searching out a career in lexicography to a woman tasting her first experience of sexual intimacy and the painful experience of an unwanted pregnancy and the uniquely female experience of childbirth. We see her growing passion for female rights through involvement with suffragette activist Tilda Taylor (Angela Nica Sullen) and a woman’s helpless experience of loss and grief at wartime.

Esme and Tilda Taylor (Angela Nica Sullen)

As a male member of the audience I am acutely aware of  not only how language and words define who we are and how different meanings impact on our view of ourselves and the world but also of the significance of the unifying force of the word Love in contrast to the definition of Bondmaid. The co-production of The Dictionary of Lost Words by the State Theatre Company of South Australia with the Sydney Theatre Company touches the heart and opens the mind.  Jonathon Oxlade’s ingenious design of a wall of pigeon holes becomes a repository for words or a collection of curiosities or house lights in Trent Suidgeest’s clever lighting design. The changing scenes and timelines are evocatively underscored by Max Lyandvert’s beautifully composed score from the playful opening music to the soulful strains of The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond. Dates and locations are displayed on a screen while Arthur directs a fluid and mesmerizing production that fascinates, enlightens, captivates and moves us to tears or elicits gales of laughter in the scene in Covered Market where Mabel (Ksenja Logan ) teaches Esme the meaning of c**t. 

Esme, Mabel, and Lizzie at Covered Market

 

A uniformly strong cast bring Laughton’s adaptation to life with verve and relish. The actors change roles with ease and absolute conviction. Only Johnny Nasser as Harry Nicoll, Brian Meegan as Sir. James Murray and Shannen Alyce Quan as Esme retain the one role. Quan gives an incandescent performance from the delightfully effervescent young child to the perplexed teenager, the lovestruck young woman, the feisty suffragette and the grief stricken war widow. Quan runs the gamut of emotion and experience in a performance that is uplifting, moving, powerful and affirmative. There is excellent support from Johnny Nasser as Esme’s father, Kathryn Adams as Lizzie Lester, Mrs. Smyth and Maria, Ksenja Logos as Mabel, Ditte and suffragettes Alice and Megan, Brian Meegan as Sir James Murray, Arkia Ashraf as Gareth Owen and Mr. Crane, James Smith as Bill Taylor and Frederick Sweatman and Angela Nica Sullen as Tilda Taylor, Sarah and Arthur Mayling.

Harry Nicoll (Johnny Nasser) and Esme (Shannen Alyce Quan)

 

It comes as no surprise that Pip Williams’s original story should have garnered so many awards and adulation. This production is a noble tribute to the book and a fascinating and heart-warming theatrical delight in its own right. Apparently the Canberra Season is unsurprisingly sold out. I still urge you to try however you may to get a ticket, This is a theatrical treat that you won’t want to miss.

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS

Adapted by Verity Laughton from the book by Pip Williams

Directed by Jessica Arthur

The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre to May 24

 

Reviewed by Len Power 16 May 2025

 

Travelling through time, The Dictionary of Lost Words tells the story of the girl who stole the word ‘bondmaid’, which was found to be missing from the Oxford English Dictionary in 1901.

Young and motherless Esme Nicholls spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a converted garden shed in Oxford, where her father and a team of lexicographers are gathering words for the first Oxford English Dictionary.

Hiding under the sorting table, she catches a word, ‘bondmaid’, on a card as it falls. Finding other words that have been neglected by the men, Esme begins a collection of her own - the Dictionary of Lost Words.

Growing up, Esme realizes that the recording by men of words and meanings related to women’s experiences have been given little importance. Through the power of the words she has gathered, she effectively gives voice to the many silenced people she has come to know over the years – the actresses, suffragettes, market traders and workers.

South Australian novelist Pip Williams’ internationally best-selling book, in a stage adaptation by Verity Laughton, has been given a sumptuous co-production by the State Theatre Company South Australia and the Sydney Theatre Company.

Directed with great imagination by Jessica Arthur, it has a superbly designed split-level set by Jonathon Oxlade that incorporates clever projections with a fine lighting design by Trent Suidgeest. It really is a feast for the eyes.

The cast of eight, some of whom play multiple roles, all give nicely etched characterizations. Shannen Alyce Quan plays the huge role of Esme Nicholls with great skill and charm, ageing from young girl to woman as the play progresses. Johnny Nasser gives a strong, appealing performance as her father. Both performers play their changes in age with notable subtlety, aided by the detailed costume designs of Alisa Paterson.

Johnny Nasser (Harry Nicholls) and Shannen Alyce Quan (young Esme Nicholls)

Amongst the performers playing multiple roles, Angela Nica Sullen is a standout as actress and suffragist, Tilda, giving her a formidable strength as well as warmth. Kathryn Adams is a delight as Lizzie, the maid in the Nicholls’ household, and Ksenja Logos is memorable as Mabel, a market worker who teaches Esme about certain words not heard in polite society.

Kathryn Adamas (Lizzie) and Shannen Alyce Quan (grownup Esme Nicholls)

The play is a subtle lesson in the power of words and how they can silence certain sectors of society, particularly women, as they struggle to be heard in a man’s world. Its message is effectively and beautifully told in this very enjoyable production.

 

Photos by Prudence Upton

This review was first published by Canberra CityNews digital edition on 17 May 2025.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.