The world as it was in the late 1980s is another country in so many ways. But when it comes to the architecture of power in New South Wales – the turbid confluence of politics, graft and old-school networks – it’s more or less business as usual. David Williamson’s Top Silk, which premiered in 1989 – as did the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), as it happens – retains a striking topicality.

Top Silk explores the personal cost of political ambition through the disintegration of a family divided by competing ideals. Trevor (Nicholas Brown), a celebrated QC with Labor Party connections, is persuaded to enter politics after a conservative government wins office. As his political star rises, he’s drawn into a web of compromises that erode the very principles he so valiantly stands for. It also strains to breaking point his relationships at home with his public defender wife, Jane (Rachel Gordon), and their apparently unexceptional son, Mark (Samir Nasser).

Nicholas Brown, Rachel Gordon and Samir Nasser in Top Silk. Photo © Prudence Upton

While Trevor pursues power, Jane faces a moral dilemma of her own when she’s assigned to defend...