Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
April 3, 2018

The post-nuclear-catastrophe dystopia of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children isn’t a barren landscape of dog-eat-dog savages huddled around bin-fires, rather it’s an intimate domestic scene in which scarcity abounds in more subtle ways. Water is carefully portioned, electricity is intermittent, food is grown but meat is rare – and in the British playwright’s topical three-hander, these concerns play out against the depletion of other finite resources, like health, time and even love.

“Retired people are like nuclear power stations. We like to live by the sea,” says Hazel, played by Pamela Rabe in this co-production between Sydney and Melbourne Theatre Companies, which has opened at the Sydney Opera House after a run at Southbank.

Sarah Pierse and Pamela Rabe in Sydney Theatre Company’s The Children. Photo © Jeff Busby

Unlike Kirkwood’s epic Chimerica, which was produced by Sydney Theatre Company last year, the action in The Children – such as it is in this fiercely dialogue-driven play – takes place in a single room of a sea-side cottage. Elizabeth Gadsby’s set is a detailed, wooden beach-house with the lightly mismatched furniture of temporary or holiday...