This is my fifth Joanna Murray-Smith play this year, after her Switzerland at the Ensemble in May, followed by her adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, the revival of Julia at the STC, and the recent Flight Path Theatre staging of her two-hander Berlin.

The Melbourne writer’s visibility on Sydney’s stages speaks to both the quality of her writing and to some risk-averse thinking in our theatre scene right now.

Dating back to 2006 (Melbourne Theatre Company produced it first), The Female of the Species is Murray-Smith’s take on a real incident in which feminist author Germain Greer was assaulted in her own home by a disturbed 19-year-old student. Greer wasn’t best pleased by Murray-Smith’s effort, branding her an “insane reactionary” for turning the episode into a farce.

Lib Campbell, Jude Fuda and Lucy Miller in The Female of the Species. Photo © Noni Carroll

The celebrity feminist icon in this case is Margot Mason (Lucy Miller), a veteran provocatrice struggling to finish her next book – or, more accurately, start it.

Enter Molly Rivers (Jade Fuda), a former student who has tracked Mason down to her country house. A first, it...