The extraordinary Robert Menzies, an actor of the highest calibre, brings this incredibly challenging material to the stage in a 65-minute monologue that’s as intense and tightly wound as a mousetrap.
The overall standard was truly surpassing, even by the consistently high measure customarily applicable to this worthy event on Sydney's autumnal arts calendar.
It's 1892 on the mean streets of Sydney. Unwed 18-year-old mother, Amber Murray, cast aside by the child's rapist father, and out by her parents, sleeps rough in the reserve, with her beloved babe-in-arms, Horace.
A gifted embroider of words, Friel combines soft lyricism and hard meaning in his play, a tragical comical historical pastoral on a spree and spoiling for a spirited spar.
In the care of Pinchgut Opera’s director, Erin Helyard, this music, formulaic as it indeed is in some respects, sprang off the page into an experience rich in emotions.
Contradiction, conundrum, conflict, racism, misogyny and homophobia run through this play like a main circuit cable snaking through a moral minefield of explosive allegation.