Review: COMMENTARY at Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Tuesday 25th August 2026.

The State Theatre Company of South Australia continues its season with Commentary, written by Ash Flanders and directed by the company’s Artistic Director, Petra Kalive. The play has some brilliantly funny lines that brought forth gusts of laughter, but it also has a great deal of serious content that raises many questions, without trying to impose answers. The audience is left with plenty to think about. Kalive has taken this very fine script and assembled an ideal cast, then brought out all of the interweaving threads running through this complex production.

Matilda Woodroofe’s set design has a five-panel floor to ceiling window with curtains than can be drawn across, and with a panel either side for projections of images and videos. When not playing a character, the cast dress in orange overalls to add and remove furniture. Nic Mollison’s lighting design helps create smaller areas and adds atmosphere. This is a multimedia performance. Composer, Dan Thorpe, is responsible for the sound and video design, with the video content provided by Matt Byrne.

Nick was a filmmaker, but is now a lecturer at university. His first film, Low, made two decades earlier and having won a German film festival prize, is being screened at a local film festival, and the controversy that surrounded that film and prevented its wider screening is renewed. Both its production and content were accused of involving abuse and exploitation, and his disgraced film-making partner, the male lead in Low, Hamish, vanished and is, possibly, dead. As the director, Nick has been asked to speak about Low and give a running commentary at the screening, but a number of women bring up the past.

Gyton Grantley plays Nick, giving a multifaceted performance, adding recorded narration to his live performance. When conversing with Saskia, who is in America, they set up web cams and ring lights, and we see what their cameras are showing, projected onto the screens at either side of the stage. Many costume changes mark the passage of time. Grantley does a remarkable job of conveying all of Nick’s trepidations, insecurities, fears, anger, disappointments, and frustrations in a superb characterisation. He is not alone, with the three others, each playing two roles, also giving very convincing performances.

His wife, Mish, and Anna, a reporter, are played by Anna Steen. Saskia, once his lover, and the lead in Low, as an underage teen, is now in America, starring in a cheap police television series. She is played by Kate Cheel, who also plays Clea. Gen is his student and current lover, and Frankie is a teenager who arrives with news of what became of Hamish, both played by Shardae Santos. Another underage teen, Jessica, appears in an old photograph, taken through her window by Hamish, with the actual image featuring Ruby Patrich.

These three are the catalysts for Nick’s emotional journey, a mix of denial, delusion, and self-reflection. Steen and Cheel are, of course, familiar faces to Adelaide audiences, with a string of impressive performances behind them, adding one more to their reputations for quality with this production. Santos is a relative newcomer, but gives equally satisfying performances in her two roles. Together, the complete a very solid cast.

This production shows that the company is in sound hands under Petra Kalive. Be sure to get tickets.

Photography, Matt Byrne.