Sydney Reviews

A spotlit Sherrin takes centre stage, visual acknowledgement and welcome to country for those who adore the great game of Australian Rules Football. It’s a brilliant image to start Strong is the New Pretty, Suzie Miller’s supersized new play about the origins of the AFL Women’s League.

Half the population, if not more, of footy enthusiasts are women. Yet before 2017 there was little recognition and no national platform for a professional league of their own.

Strong is the New Pretty is the epic story of the suffragists of the boot who fought for recognition and their rightful place in the sport’s space. It begins with three monologues from three passionate women who will initiate and ignite the dream of an official women’s league. Five other women form a chorus behind them, portraying supporters and naysayers, the negatives largely of the male gender. The same five morph into players and commentators as the play proceeds.

Director Sarah Giles keeps the game afoot with the precision pacing and stage strategies of a premiership coach. Along with Movement Director Kelley Abbey, Giles has styled a beautifully calibrated choreography, wherein even the moments of stillness are moving. And there’s dancing, totally appropriate in a high kick sport and representative of the joy and jubilation of playing and winning.

Christina Smith’s design is spick and span spare, leaving the heavy lifting to video designer Craig Wilkinson and sound design by Brady Watkins. Lighting designer Paul Jackson’s bank of stadium size field lights on either wing is particularly effective both practically and evocatively.

A star team beats a team of stars as the saying goes, but we get it both ways with this cast: Lucy Bell, Amy Hack, Amy Ingram, Edyll, Amber McMahon, Tara Morice, Nyasha Ogden, Contessa Treffone all match perfect, kicking goals throughout its uninterrupted eighty minutes, even though the journey is not exactly a straight run at the big sticks.

Strong is the New Pretty is about setting a goal and pursuing it with determination and grit, forging through the rough and tumble of sneering sceptics, burly bureaucracies, and entrenched sexism and racism, a vile bile pile up given rancid reign through social media.

Just like its subject, Strong is the New Pretty is a triumph, and a celebration.