It’s not quite the Great White Way but Sydney’s Broadway has a theatre at last.

Long delayed by building and approvals issues, KXT/bAKEHOUSE has opened its new premises in an imposing street corner structure originally built as a branch of the National Bank of Australasia in 1890. It’s a very welcome addition to a local precinct suffering from economic and cultural long COVID.

The honour of being the first show in this new venue goes to emerging indie company CrissCross Productions and its staging of American writer James McManus’s four-handed drama Cherry Smoke (a play that premiered in Sydney a dozen years or so ago, at the Old Fitzroy).

Fraser Crane (left) and Tom Dawson in Cherry Smoke. Photo © Abraham de Souza.

Set in a rust belt town in Pennsylvania, its focus is on four youngsters dealing the best way they know how with the marginalising effects of intergenerational poverty.

Fish and Duffy are brothers, “Irish twins” born nine months apart but unalike in most respects.

Fish (played by Tom Dawson) is determined to fight his way out of poverty using the only tools he has – his fists. Schooled in illegal boxing...