In several recent interviews playwright Nakkiah Lui has highlighted the challenge of writing satire in a country where the political reality is barely to be believed. As if to prove her point, her latest play for Sydney Theatre Company, How to Rule the World, opened after a first parliamentary sitting week that has already seen a broken record for the longest Question Time in the nation’s history and a senator admitting to smearing blood on another senator’s door.

Following the success of her hit family comedy Black is the New White and last year’s ferocious superhero comedy Blackie Blackie Brown – both of which have gone on to play around the country – How to Rule the World, directed by Paige Rattray, takes a swing at Australian political life in a wildly funny satire that out-Canberras Canberra.

Michelle Lim Davidson, Anthony Taufa and Nakkiah Lui in Sydney Theatre Company’s How to Rule the World. Photo © Prudence Upton

Three young, frustrated politicos – Vic (played by Lui herself), an Aboriginal woman, Zaza (Michelle Lim Davidson), an Asian woman, and Chris (Anthony Taufa), an Islander man – hatch a scheme to change the face of Australian politics...