Ash Flanders’ new play, Commentary, commissioned and presented by State Theatre Company South Australia, is very Adelaide.

It takes the city’s cultural ecosystem of festivals, film schools, and universities, and turns it into a darkly comic meditation on who gets to tell the story and whose story is it anyway?

These themes are very much of the moment, and this is a classic case of art imitating life imitating art.

At the centre of the story is Nick, played by Gyton Grantley, a once-promising filmmaker turned academic whose controversial debut feature, Low, is being resurrected for a retrospective at the Adelaide Film Festival.

Low won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the highlight of Nick’s not-too-successful career. The film’s co-creator, Nick’s former best friend Hamish, is disgraced and presumed dead and Low carries with it allegations around abuse and exploitation.

Asked to record a director’s commentary, Nick discovers that the past can be a dangerous place.

Gyton Grantley in Commentary. Photo © Matt Byrne

The theatrical conceit here of recording a commentary, or a podcast, is neatly handled and enables...