Helpmann Award-nominated writer Ash Flanders’ Commentary is equal parts scalpel and mic drop. Premiering in August with State Theatre Company South Australia, this sharp and funny work interrogates the ethics of art-making in an era when cancelling people feels like a spectator sport.
Enter Nick, played by Gyton Grantley (Underbelly, House Husbands), a once-promising filmmaker now university lecturer. His controversial debut feature, Low, is being resurrected for a retrospective screening at the Adelaide Film Festival. Low was co-created with his former best friend Hamish, who is now disgraced and presumed dead. The film remains dogged by allegations of abuse and exploitation.
As Nick prepares a director’s commentary and public appearance, the past begins to resurface through a chorus of women (played by a cast of South Australian actors): student-lover Gen (recent Flinders University graduate Shardae Santos), wife Mish (Anna Steen), former muse Saskia (Kate Cheel), and a teenage girl named Frankie (also played by Santos)
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.
Director Petra Kalive describes Commentary as “a work about who controls the conversation and who has the loudest voice. Whose voices are doing the silencing or who is getting silenced?”
Director: Petra Kalive | Featuring: Kate Cheel, Gyton Grantley, Ruby Patrich, Shardae Santos, Anna Steen | Set & Costume Designer: Matilda Woodroofe | Composer / Sound & Video Designer: Dan Thorpe | Lighting Designer & Projection Consultant: Nic Mollison | Content Creator: Matt Byrne | Assistant Director: Valerie Berry | Writer: Ash Flanders
Commentary
Dunstan Playhouse – Adelaide Festival Centre, King William Road, Adelaide
Season: 21 August – 5 September 2026
Information and Bookings: www.statetheatrecompany.com.au
Image: Gyton Grantley stars in Commentary – photo by Claudio Raschella