When Justine Clarke first performed Dennis Kelly’s gripping one-woman play at the 2022 Adelaide Festival, Limelight gave the production a five-star review, describing her performance as “utterly remarkable”. Directed by Mitchell Butel, Clarke won rapturous reviews in a return Adelaide season in 2022 and at the 2023 Sydney Festival. Now, she reprises the harrowing role for Sydney Theatre Company. Her unnamed character explains how she met her future husband in an airport queue. Sparks fly. They marry and have children, but cracks in their relationship begin to show, with devastating results. Be prepared to have the wind knocked out of your sails.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

She meets him in an airport queue and sparks fly. Their passionate love affair takes them to marriage, mortgage and children – an ordinary family life. Her natural working-class wit works to her advantage and unexpectedly, she starts rising above her allotted rung on the British social ladder. But as the power dynamic between them shifts, imperceptible cracks become yawning gulfs. When the home they built begins to fall, nothing prepares her for what happens next.

A ticking time bomb, Girls & Boys is an engrossing, one-woman play from Dennis Kelly (Osama the Hero, Matilda: The Musical) that shifts gears from romantic comedy to shock in a matter of seconds.

The incredible Justine Clarke, whose versatility has shone on stage (Julia) and on screen (Love My Way, Tangle, Look Both Ways), delivers this edge-of-your-seat monologue that will leave you breathless.

“Girls & Boys is a clever play intelligently built on quiet passion and no hiding places. Justine Clarke… is brilliant.” (Stage Noise)