On the Beach review – an achingly beautiful depiction of the end of the world

‘[Dwight and Moira’s] tender care for each other creates space for them both to find some final moments of grace’ … Contessa Treffone and Tai Hara in On the Beach. Photograph: Daniel Boud

In 1957, Nevil Shute, the British aeronautical engineer, Naval Reserve officer and novelist, wrote of the end of all things as we know it in his novel On the Beach. In his version of Melbourne in 1963, nuclear war has wiped out signs of life in the northern hemisphere, and radiation poisoning is drifting on the wind towards the city. With only a few months to go and no way to save yourself, what matters most? Who do we become when the world changes? Can we stop a catastrophe, or do we lean into it?

Here in 2023, Tommy Murphy (ABC’s Significant Others, Holding the Man) has adapted the novel for the stage in a world that is especially sensitive to how close we are to the end. We have been buffeted by natural disasters brought on by the climate crisis; we have lived the eerie twilight of Covid-19 lockdowns; we are gripped by the horror of Russia-Ukraine war. We know very well the tension between destruction abroad and its delayed impact at home. Murphy’s play is still set in the 1960s, but it is suffused with our own dread and hopelessness; it is a much-needed vessel for our grief.