Above: (I to r) Co-Director Aunty Roxanne McDonald also played the roles of Grandma and Mum. Jade Lomas-Ronan as Xanthe. Featured image: Jade Lomas-Ronan as Xanthe, Perry Mooney as Ellen & Lara Croydon as Izzy. Photo credit : Stephen Wilson Barker.

Sisterhood. Support. Identity. Family. Love. Career. Courage. Ageing. Heartbreak. Loss. Recovery. Conflict. Conciliation.

Any good book is chockers with the above themes. And entertainments featuring groups of total individuals gathering for book clubs often promise a lively slice of life humanity and comment on self as well as the featured literature.

Meet from the first book club scene, before the impressive floor-to-ceiling bookcase backdrop set, the  longtime friends Veronica, Izzy, Xanthe, Ellen and Nadine-sistas in later life mostly making their way in Brisbane after leaving family and Wiradjuri land.

Nadine has married into an Aboriginal family. Richard, Izzy’s brother has children and a home with successful white novelist Nadine that many would envy.  Xanthe has a loving husband and is keen to be a mother. Veronica has raised amazing sons with her husband who seems loving on the surface.

Above:(l to r): Jade Lomas-Ronan as Xanthe, Perry Mooney as Ellen and Lara Croydon as Izzy. Photo Credit: Stephen Wilson Barker.

Completing the group, we meet effervescent Ellen enjoying life and lovers in the city as a celebrant for an Aboriginal funeral service. Izzy craves to be a career woman and Australia’s Wiradjuri answer to Oprah. Roxanne McDonald’s character of Grandmother (simmering wisdom,help and a stunningly lovable one-woman chorus in every scene) looks on and feels plus thinks before every word.

This is quite the book club roll call, but we quickly learn the tiddas are not without current and potential heartaches and savage disappointments. The script, adapted from Anita Heiss’ book, takes total flight on this stage, as it did for the post-Covid production at Queensland’s La Boite Theatre.

In the play’s ninety-minute swoop sans interval, the sensational ensemble acting plus the slick script push the busy life details and experiences of the book club members along with keen momentum. This is a vivid telling of the characters’ separate stories from that imperfect and gruelling arch many of us experience in later life

Above: Perry Mooney as Ellen and Sean Dow as Craig. Photo Credit: Stephen Wilson Barker.

Each tidda in this play boldy breaks the mould whilst remaining true to their regional background and passion for a better future understood by all. They share, educate and endure so much in front of the fortunate audience as they work, love and deal with adult life in the city away from their Mudgee home.

The handful of characters plus Grandma gather and celebrate so many female Aboriginal authors on each acronymal ‘Vixens’  book club night. The rapid-fire precis-laden appreciation chats are something to treasure, as are the contrasting book titles we are exposed to. The scenes starting in such club nights are sobering reminders of the presence of such authors, as well as the the need for their characters and topics to be heard and read by audience members and general public readers alike.

Tiddahood with all its strength, energy, ambition and facets of being a Wiradjuri or other woman in this Australia enjoys some well- realised male characters as foils . In this story, five very different characters of husbands, boyfriends or new fathers are virtuosically given individual and beautiful voice plus gestures by a single gifted actor, Sean Dow. His is an impressive contribution to each of this play’s mini-denouments.  Costume choices for each persona are worth a favourable mention here as well as Sean’s characterisations.

Above: Sean Dow as Asher and Lara Croydon as Izzy. Photo Credit: Stephen Wilson Barker.

Concepts of safety, intelligence, protection and the power of group comment help the Vixens forge identity through a multitude of challenges. The onstage honesty of all challenges represented, be it of family, friendship, life after divorce and commitment-phobia in this dmanding post-colonial, post-Covid, pre-Invasion Day and post -Referendum Australia will thrill you.

Any group of characters present together for the majority of a stage work must be well-delineated and consistent with regards to their different features and subtelties of communication or manner. Such facets are excellently polished in the direction of busy scenes and personalities interacting here. It is throughout a very warm, edgy, no-nonsense piece of theatre which will touch you deeply results.

Exposure to Aboriginal artists and themes of living in contemporary Australia in the fragmented songtrack has a rewarding, heightened effect, which heightens the existing exposure to titles and Aboriginal authors of the selected books in the Vixens’ meetings.

This is one play well worthy of the Sydney Festival co-production, the Belvoir Theatre Balnaves Foundation support, and an enduring place in live theatre repertoire. A memorable line in the play comments that all storytelling created in this country now needs to include Aboriginal characters. Tiddas demonstrates the joy and success resulting from this standard. This play is pivotal for the success of modern theatre production in this country. It  forges a sensible, caring group think for the challenging club we find ourselves in moving forward.

‘Tiddas’ is playing at Belvoir St Theatre until Jan 28. Run Time is 1 hour thirty minutes without interval.