Review

Do Not Go Gentle (Sydney Theatre Company)

Patricia Cornelius's poetically powerful depiction of dementia and old age is stranded in the wilderness, its potential unfulfilled.

Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney

Reviewed on 27 May, 2023

by Jason Blake on 29 May, 2023

Written in 2006, Patricia’s Cornelius’s Do Not Go Gentle has the distinction of being one of the most awarded Australian plays of recent years. Among others it has collected the NSW Premiers Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize and the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award. Quite an achievement.

Yet its journey to the mainstage has been a slow one, despite the larding of literary accolades. Fundamentally, it is a challenging piece of theatre – challenging to get right in production, and challenging to accommodate in state theatre seasons tuned to the dual wavelengths of cultural Zeitgeist and box office potential.

This, after all, is a play whose historic references may be remote or dusty-seeming to younger and/or culturally diverse audiences. It also asks us to direct our thoughts toward dementia, dying and death – the gristly stuff that we, as a society, actively seek to avoid.

Sydney Theatre Company has taken a punt on what is a long way from a sure thing.