The Sugar House is a moving family drama that grips you from beginning til end and takes you on an unexpected emotional whirlwind that you don’t even notice happening within you – testament to a brilliantly directed, performed and designed performance.

We are taken to a working-class household in Australia in the 70s where we see intricate familial dynamics at play; the detail of which makes this writing shine. Matriarch grandmother played by Janine Macreadie leads with a blazing performance, brimming with fire and agonising love for her family, filled with equal measures of pain and joy. The family are made up of no easy characters; her son, played by Adam Fitzgerald, accidentally gets himself on the wrong side of the law, becoming the catalyst for much suffering and tension within the family who fear the hopeless position that their poverty plunges them into. Mother, daughter and granddaughter dynamics are navigated beautifully by Macreadie, Fiona Skinner and Jessica Zerlina Leafe, crescendoing in a particularly moving moment in the second act when we see all three women united by one of the characters’ death beds where final words need not to be spoken, for this is a family that shows love rather than vocalises it. Gentle humour and charm is brought by Sidney Macredie playing June’s husband, and cheeky warmth and knowing by Lea Dube, playing Jenny. 

Important themes to do with generational trauma, gentrification, corrupt police/legal systems, and somewhat toxic families are all explored in such a beautifully nuanced manner through specificity of character relationships. The themes land home for all and become truly universal through the microscopic lense in which they are interrogated. 

All in all, The Sugar House is a beautiful production that is equally heart wrenching as it is warming in its depiction of difficult but authentic familial love and is a must see this November.

****** Five stars

Reviewed by: Viv Williams

The Sugar House runs at the Finborough Theatre until 20 November, with tickets available here.