The performance starts off with a fart joke, but no one laughs because the audience is already unsettled and playwright Tom Holloway isn’t fooling anyone.
Red Sky Morning is a story of a day in the life of a family – Mother (Emma Choy), Father (Alpha Kargbo), and Daughter (Izabella Day) – struggling in silence. They’ve become absent from each other, and in a way absent from their own lives. Each character narrates their day as if they were merely a passenger in it as opposed to one responsible for the choices they make.
Tom Holloway’s script is bleak, often abrasively told, with three voices overlapping in moments to the point of cacophony. The sense of futility permeates everything, which is exactly what each of our characters express – whether it’s the Daughter unable to open up to her Mother, the Mother unable to go a day without drinking, or the Father unable to articulate the pain he carries inside him.
The characters’ respective observations of the colour of the morning sky suggests tomorrow will be the same. Indeed many of the design elements seep directly from the emotional desolation in the writing.
Warmth is eradicated on Harry Gill’s black and perspex set, broken up by a few narrow, smooth metal poles that resemble the bones of trees rather than anything nurturing, all placed on an incline as appropriate for a story where three family members each struggle with their own respective Sisyphean lives.
If the tone wasn’t clear enough from the beginning, the actors are also in place looking – for want of a better word – traumatised, as you take your seat.
With direction by Lyall Brooks, the performances were excellent, if harrowing at times. Alpha Kargbo was terrific as the Father, desperate in the beginning to appear happy and by the end just desperate to put his hands on any means of escape.
Emma Choy’s performance as the Mother was compelling in the way an empty house might be to watch burning down. All of her promises, her refusal to see the damage her addiction is causing to those closest to her, were all beautifully portrayed.
In a house where no one is physically violent to each other, how much trauma can a child soak up? The answer is plenty, which Izabella Day has her character demonstrate succinctly in a violent and brutal recollection, giving a terrific (and perhaps the most realistic) performance.
Like the film Requiem For a Dream, Red Sky Morning is a play you may only want to experience once, but that experience is definitely worth it.
Red Sky Morning
Theatre Works, 14 Acland Street, St Kilda
Performance: Friday 8 May 2026
Season continues to 16 May 2026
Information and Bookings: www.theatreworks.org.au
Images: Emma Choy and Alpha Kargbo – photo by Sarah Clarke | Izabella Day – photo by Sarah Clarke | Emma Choy – photo by Sarah Clarke
Review: June Collins