Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir
May 10, 2018

“A constant refrain for the people of Pyrmont,” says Narelle Macreadie to a real estate agent who’s told her, rather firmly, to leave the apartment she’s being shown. Alana Valentine’s new play The Sugar House is an unapologetically sprawling memory play that moves between rapidly changing Pyrmont in 1966, 1985 and 2007. Putting urban redevelopment, social mobility and the increasing expulsion of the working class from inner cities under the microscope, Valentine’s work is clearly and compellingly realised by director Sarah Goodes and a uniformly strong cast in this production for Belvoir.

Sacha Horler, Sheridan Harbridge and Kris McQuade. All photos © Brett Boardman

Beginning in 2007 with Narelle, compulsively drawn to an apartment complex that used to be the CSR sugar factory in Pyrmont where her grandfather Sidney used to work, the play tracks the Macreadie family, which is headed up by fierce matriarch June. With references to Ronald Ryan, the last man to be put to death by the state in Australia, the criminalisation of poverty is at the heart of this play, foregrounded by June’s son Ollie imprisoned for transporting stolen goods. Terrified of brushes with...