How do you stage a play that roams roads and follows rivers from Grafton to Coonamble? In Sydney Theatre Company’s new adaptation of D’arcy Niland’s classic Australian novel The Shiralee, directed by Jessica Arthur, there are two constants: land and sky.
A floor of wooden boards slowly loses its order and curves up like a ridge to meet the horizon. The trunks of ghost gums, wheeled in to give swaggies and rovers some cover as they make camp, stretch up towards a sun out of our view, disappearing beyond the proscenium. On this set, designed by Jeremy Allen and lit by Trent Suidgeest, swagman Macauley’s journey feels vast – but, crucially, not isolating. This is a story about breaking down isolation, breaking free from trauma, and learning to connect with friends, loved ones, strangers – and your own child.
Longtime itinerant swaggie Macauley (Josh McConville) isn’t on his own any more. His daughter Buster (Ziggy Resnick) is right there with him, snatched from his estranged wife’s apartment in a moment of anger. She’s almost 10, born in Kings Cross, but now she’s always there by the fire (real campfires dot the stage) when they sleep under the stars. She’s his shadow and his “shiralee” – the pack he slings over his shoulder; the burden he must carry.
For a man who doesn’t want to be connected to anything – he won’t love anything that might leave him – caring for a child doesn’t come naturally. But there they are, and love and connection are hard to kill once they start growing. Maybe it’s all right to have a tether.
Originally published in 1955, the novel quickly won hearts: two years later came a film starring Peter Finch, and in 1987, a TV miniseries with Bryan Brown. In this new version, playwright Kate Mulvany (who also stars as Marge, Macauley’s wife) digs into the grittier moments, especially at the end of the first act, when Macauley faces the depth of his darkness. But she also finds new notes of compassion.
Mulvany is no stranger to translating these strivers of Australian literature to the stage. Her adaptations of The Harp in the South and Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park (who was married to Niland) were packed with wit, warmth and wonder, but they were also underscored with a thoughtful rigour: what do our classic stories say about Australia then, and what does it mean for the Australia we live in now?
In The Shiralee, Mulvany applies that same lens by opening up the story beyond Macauley’s internal monologue, giving the other characters more depth, dimension and clarity. Arthur – a director who gives scenes full life with background action, quick jokes and smart blocking – is in harmonious step with Mulvany’s script. We hear more from and linger on stage with Buster, who is clever and funny and irresistibly loving, played in smart balance by Resnick, who is sweet but not cloying. We spend more time with Marge – reckoning with the reality of a life spent alone with a young child in Kings Cross trying to survive while her husband stays on the road for years at a time – and Lily (Catherine Văn-Davies), Macaulay’s first love and first conscious abandonment.
Mulvany also looks closely at Macauley’s violent streak, and why it comes more easily than care (we see exactly why he’s haunted and how he’s turned himself cold). There’s a clear throughline to the legacies of male violence that families still carry today, and McConville, who plays conflict with nuance, never shortcuts the struggle.
But Mulvany doesn’t just apply depth, she also adds breadth, reaching beyond the novel to include a few more stories that wouldn’t or couldn’t be written down so freely at the time. She populates her world with swaggies who are women and swagmen who love other men. The supporting cast (including Stephen Anderson, Lucia Mastrantone, and Aaron Pedersen, all fantastic), play a variety of roles. Paul Capsis in particular shines in the expanded role of Desmond, an oddball bush poet. Macauley can deny it all he likes, but Mulvany makes it clear: he has a community here, if he wants it.
A few of Mulvany’s kinder resolutions feel heavy-handed, but these moments only stand out because the rest of the play is so abundant with well-crafted, complex scenes that twine and deepen the emotional and narrative arcs of Buster, Macauley, Lily and Marge. There’s real honesty, humour, and heart here – a reminder that softness and love can grow even in the harshest places. If even closed-off Macauley can start to open up, maybe we all can too.
The Shiralee plays at Sydney Opera House until 29 November
