Strong is the New Pretty review – Suzie Miller’s AFLW play is both shocking and crowd-pleasing

Strong is the New Pretty, the new play by Suzie Miller, at Brisbane festival: ‘Miller swaps the courtroom for the locker rooms and boardrooms of the AFL, to tell the story of the AFLW.’ Photograph: Morgan Roberts

Suzie Miller is the rare Australian playwright who can open a main stage national touring show without tent-pole casting. Her new play, Strong is the New Pretty, has been highly anticipated since it was announced, coming off the back of the globetrotting success of her sexual assault play Prima Facie and followup hits RBG: Of Many, One, about pioneering US supreme court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Inter Alia, starring Rosamund Pike as a judge grappling with sexual assault allegations against her own son.

With Strong is the New Pretty, Miller swaps the courtroom for the locker rooms and boardrooms of the AFL, to tell the story of the women’s league. Its premiere at Brisbane festival, hot on the heels of sexual assault allegations involving Sydney Swans players, feels particularly freighted. The sexism and misogyny depicted in the play is very much front of mind.