How noble in reason is man. In so many other ways, how frightfully petty.

When you think about it – as David Williamson has in his highly entertaining play Nearer the Gods – it really is a wonder that we’re not still wandering about, terrified we could topple off the edge of the earth. Because while the ages have abounded with geniuses all a-sweat to advance knowledge and divine the greatest of the universe’s secrets, ego-driven squabbling and mean-spirited prejudice make for formidable, perennial and sometimes fatal saboteurs.

It’s a constant push and pull between intellect and stupidity, which might have stymied civilisation entirely, were – as Nearer the Gods posits – it not for faith. Not necessarily in God, but in each other.

Gareth Davies as Isaac Newtown in David Williamson’s Nearer the Gods at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, 2022. Image © Prudence Upton.

Given its Sydney premiere under award-winning director Janine Watson, this two-hour, two-act production carries this message through a creative retelling of that time Isaac Newton very almost never published his breakthrough theory...