The paint is peeling, the bacteria in the communal fridge are alive and well and something is up with a woman in a corduroy skirt. She is our initial guide around the inner sanctum of her workplace – an incongruous, cheap and uncomfortable looking staff room at West Vale Primary – where misguided practicalities come at the cost of aesthetics.

Angela Betzien’s ambitious, latest offering, Chalkface, takes shape in a place where the building blocks of our future are formed, though their importance is disastrously under-appreciated and the curriculum has not been updated for decades.  The endemic failures of our education system are examined by observing a faculty of teachers in varying stages of disarray.

Catherine McClements, Susan Prior and Stephanie Somerville in Chalkface, State Theatre Company of South Australia, 2022. Photo © Matt Byrne

Jessica Arthur directs a cast of actors playing misfit characters, helmed by Catherine McClements as veteran teacher Pat Novitsky. As the unapologetic destroyer of enthusiasm, we, like her students, find her disarmingly warm, despite her blunt cynicisms and age-weary disillusionment. McClements’ timing and delivery are exemplary and her foils – Nathan O’Keefe as the love-to-loathe Principal...