Wicked Sisters — Griffin Theatre Company

Overview

After months of closed curtains, Sydney's Griffin Theatre Company has turned the lights back on. After its first post-lockdown production Superheroes back in October, the Company is forging ahead with its final mainstage production of 2020, Wicked Sisters, taking over the Seymour Centre's Reginald Theatre.

Written by awarded playwright Alma De Groen in the late 1990s, revenge tragicomedy Wicked Sisters is De Groen's response to the lack of women aged over 50 on stage (let alone as leading roles), offering a looking glass that sees the world, in all its humour and horror, through the lens of four divergent, middle-aged women.

Following the death of Meridee's (Vanessa Downing) artificial intelligence researcher husband, her friends Judith (Hannah Waterman) and Lydia (Deborah Galanos) come over to cheer her up — and to get her to stop tiptoeing around her late husband's AI computer much like she did around him throughout their marriage. However, comedy soon turns to tragedy when Hester (Di Adams) arrives, bringing with her some unsavoury truths that nag at the four's (so-called) friendship.

Sure, it is a feminist play in a sense, but it'd be remiss to think it was just a bunch of greying gals chatting away about ambition and men on stage; Wicked Sisters tosses up ideas such as the ever-growing presence of artificial intelligence, Darwinian-like competition and, more simply, growing old and the struggle to stay relevant — all with explosive force.

In the play's latest iteration, director Nadia Tass has wrangled such conceptional grenades to ensure Wicked Sisters is as relevant, if not more so, in 2020 as it was when it premiered at Griffin's Stables Theatre back in 2002.

Catch 'Wicked Sisters' at the Seymour Centre till December 12. To buy tickets, head here.