Commentary at State Theatre Company South Australia

Helpmann Award-nominated writer Ash Flanders’ Commentary is a sharp, provocative play that interrogates the ethics of artmaking, accountability, and memory in an era of public reckoning. The story centres on Nick, played by Gyton Grantley (Underbelly, House Husbands), a once-promising filmmaker turned university lecturer, whose controversial debut feature Low is being resurrected for a retrospective screening at the local International Film Festival. The film, co-created with his former best friend Hamish (now disgraced and presumed dead), is dogged by allegations of abuse and exploitation linked to its production and content.

As Nick prepares a director’s commentary and public appearance, the past begins to resurface through a chorus of women — his student and lover Gen, his wife Mish, former muse Saskia, and a teenage girl named Frankie. Frankie’s re-emergence catalyses a chain of revelations, betrayals, and reckonings that culminate in Nick’s fall from professional and personal grace. The play’s narrative cleverly mirrors the fragmented form of a DVD commentary track — non-linear, reflexive, full of contradiction, omission, and performance.