Melbourne Reviews

Sunday Reed was unconventional – and so is this review!

Sometimes you have to sit with something. Sometimes you need to sit where maybe that something took place.

Standing underneath the overwhelming reach of a majestic oak. Is this the very tree they planted – together? Did that final toxic exchange really play out like that?

Sitting in the garden, at Heide, the day after seeing Sunday amplified those questions immensely – is this where it all happened?

A review of a performance usually comes pretty swiftly after opening night. Tell us what you think, and then tell others. That’s the deal.

But what if ticket sales are really good? A review in that case is virtually obsolete, and when there are no seats left at all, it’s just another opinion.

Unlike other major theatrical cities – Melbourne doesn’t have the equivalent of a Broadway or West End transfer and that feels a massive shame, particularly for a production like this. Sunday is one of the best things the Melbourne Theatre Company has done in some time and even with an impossibly short extension, it deservedly sold out.

But there is some redress for those who failed to get a ticket. Something that explains and perhaps even excuses this review coming at the end of the season rather than at the beginning. Like the National Theatre of Great Britain who has for some time been capturing and preserving incredible stage moments for cinema and home streaming, Melbourne Theatre Company has now begun to catalogue work for its MTC Digital Theatre programme. Mercifully, for those who missed it and for those who cannot wait to see it again, Sunday has been recorded. While there is no current release date for the production to stream through MTC Digital Theatre, look out for it and then watch it because this truly is a good as Australian theatre gets.

Writer Anthony Weigh speaks of the ‘Gaps and Shadows’ of the lives he was commissioned to write about. Distil the Reeds, Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker, Sweeney Reed and of course, Heide itself. Fill the spaces left by biographers and the missing side of correspondence. The result: a beautiful and intelligent work that presents its central character as more than a muse but instead a collaborator capable of guiding the creative process while remaining heavily invested in its outcomes. Like the narrative we imbue upon a stranger, in filling these ‘Gaps and Shadows’ Weigh has captured his version of these real people, intersecting and traversing real time and events and presenting their portraits as both plausible and fully dimensional. 

‘A fantasy of life at Heide’

Together, John and Sunday Reed summoned, nurtured, sponsored and cultivated art, artists and writers in the bohemian enclave they conceived on the periphery of 1930’s and 40’s Melbourne. Their passionate lives and work indelibly altered and influenced the direction of modern Australian art. Privilege afforded them choices unavailable to many and their eccentric lifestyle simultaneously fostered an enduring intrigue that titillates even today. While rumour and speculation abound, one thing is always clear, the driving and passionate force of Heide was Sunday Reed and she remains a thoroughly scrutinised, fascinating and influential Australian figure.

Just like the protagonist herself, imprinted into this play is Melbourne. This is a deeply and uniquely Melbourne story in its celebration, commentary and irreverence. Sunday Reed was all of Melbourne – monied Melbourne; sneering, knowing, judgemental and establishment Melbourne – a true insider on the right side of the river with the means to afford objectivity and Heide was the result of her alchemy.

Funnelling everything onto the stage in an extraordinary collaboration between Anthony Weigh and director Sarah Goodes comes Sunday. An almost forensic examination of three of Heide’s principal players, John Reed, Sidney Nolan and of course Sunday Reed herself. What has been imagined and projected here delivers an incredibly rich and in-depth study of individuals yes, but powerfully examines class, morality, feminism, self, selfishness, sex, ambition, creativity, talent, love and agonising loss.

The casting of the three principal roles is extraordinary. Nikki Sheils as Sunday is impossible to look away from, and not just because she rarely leaves the stage. Powerful and captivating, this is performance at its finest. Rich, still, heart-breaking and meticulously researched, Sheils has found what Anthony Weigh was looking for and shares them with us, those shadows and those gaps.

Across from Shiels is Matt Day as John Reed. This calm and measured performance so beautifully delivers what has been drawn to garner our admiration, at times our empathy but also to magnify the force of Sunday. Day’s John Reed is charming and insightful, we witness him seeing Sunday and recognising what he can be within their marriage – loved; loving, but liberated from conventions and quite possibly deliverance from pedestrian jealously.

In the third corner of Anna Cordingley’s wonderfully open simple and framed set is Josh McConville as Sidney Nolan. This is simply an outstanding performance. Lustful, combative, challenged and surprised by Sunday, McConville's Nolan responds to her flirtation with clear increments of surging confidence and bravado. We simultaneously witness his frustration and emasculation when Sunday refuses to leave her husband but equally, we see his confusion given what they have together remains so powerful.

While Ratidzo Mambo and Joshua Tighe are thorough in their supporting roles as Joy Hester and the young Sweeney Reed, this work is dominated by dynamics of three incredibly interesting people played masterfully but three incredibly gifted actors. This show really is unbelievably good and the standard we should expect from our State Theatre Company.

Sunday has been staged in 2023 as a layover from a previous covid corrupted season and is the first under the stewardship of new Melbourne Theatre Company Artistic Director & Co-CEO Anne-Louise Sarks. Sarks insisted this play be part of her inaugural season and in her program forward, spoke of it as “a Melbourne story about who we are and where we’ve come from.”

With five world premieres of new Australian works to follow, Sunday is an incredible indication of where we might also be going to.