Prominent British playwright Dennis Kelly’s powerful play GIRLS AND BOYS, such an innocent title for such a serious work, had its world premiere downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre London in February 2018 starring the brilliant stage and screen actress, Carey Mulligan.
Kelly’s play had its Australian premiere at the State Theatre Company of South Australia in March 2022 at Adelaide’s Odeon Theatre, directed by the then State Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Mitchell Butel and starring Justine Clarke.
Then, Butel brought the production to the 2023 Sydney Festival during which the play had a sold out season at the Everest Theatre at the Seymour Centre.
This production is now having a further life, playing to good houses at Sydney Theatre Company’s home base, the Wharf 1 Theatre.
The subject Is domestic violence. It is a subject that just won’t go away.
When the heart is involved, when people’s feelings are hurt, sometimes people just want to lash out. Reason vanishes. Destruction is left in its wake.
GIRLS AND BOYS is a solo piece, performed by Justine Clarke, who plays an unnamed woman. There is no fourth wall. She tells her story/her journey to the audience. Very direct.Unfiltered.
She speaks about how she met this guy in an airport queue. There clicked.
They begin a passionate affair. Feel comfortable and good around each other. Their romance leads to marriage, mortgage and children. Both have good careers. She is a documentary filmmaker, he an importer of antique furniture. Everything points to them having a good, long family life.
But then cracks start to appear. Something to do with the ‘green eyed monster’. The cracks become craters. The comfortable family life is upended, and there is no turning back.
GIRLS AND BOYS takes the audience to a very dark place. At oie time Clarke tells it to us straight. What I am about to tell you is going to be really tough for you to hear.
Brace yourself.
Watching the play, I had a palpable sense of Deja Vu. Years ago, in the very same Wharf 1 Theatre, I saw a play by another fine British dramatist Bryon Lavery. The play, published in 1988, was titled FROZEN. Directed by Julian Meyrick, with one of Australia’s finest actresses Helen Morse playing the role of Nancy, a mother who is frozen in grief following the murder of her daughter.
Like Helen Morse’s Nancy, Justine Clarke’s Woman is frozen in time with grief.
Seeing these plays is a disheartening experience because despite these experiences being on television, in the theatre, on our cinema screen, things just don’t seem to be shifting.
Domestic violence incidents still make the news. As the classic Aussie band Skyhooks sang, ‘Horror movie, horror movie..It’s the 6.30 news.’
Full kudos to this Sydney Theatre Company’s production. It will stay long in the memory. Haunted again.
Justine Clarke was exceptional, incandescent, in the role.
GIRLS AND BOYS is playing Wharf 1 Sydney Theatre Company till 1 November 2026.
