On Saturday, Melbourne was painted maroon-and-gold and white-and-red. Trams and pubs were packed. Kegs of beer were emptied.

I wouldn’t be the first to see something theatrical in the rituals of Grand Final day: the makeup-like face paint, the thrumming crowds like an enraptured audience. But it meant something different for those working in our domestic violence services, who instead prepared for an annual 40 percent increase in demand.

It’s a haunting statistic, and you’d be forgiven for finding it both horrifying and frustrating. An annual 40 percent increase in 2024? It would be farcical if it weren’t so utterly real.

That’s where Patricia Cornelius’s Bad Boy comes in, at that point of tension between the warring feelings that come up in response to such a damning, and damn unshakeable statistic: the terror and anger; the deep sadness, the exhaustion and drive to understand.

It’s not a perfect show; in my opinion it’s Cornelius’s weakest in recent memory. But the questions it asks us about domestic violence and the men who perpetrate it; and the feelings it seems to be trying to get at are new, ironically, because what causes them is as dogged and unfaltering as ever.

This is not the first time...