‘Beware who you invite to come to stay’ is the unwritten warning in the play The Unfriend, even if the invite was unspoken.
The Unfriend opens on the sun deck of a cruise ship, bright colours and sunshine in abundance. We meet Elsa (Helen Thomson), a brassy American widow from Denver, who has a penchant for animal print outfits matched with platform sneakers, and a compulsion to impose herself on anyone in the vicinity.
One hapless couple in her sights are a reserved English couple, Peter (Tim Walter) and Debbie (Alex Lee), who are taking a break from their busy lives, including their two children. As the cruise comes to an end, there is an exchange of emails, with Elsa exhorting that Peter and Debbie must look her up when they are in Denver.
In reciprocal fashion, the couple make loose arrangements for Elsa to visit if she is in the vicinity of their home. A couple of days after arriving back in suburbia, Peter and Debbie are shocked by a FaceTime call from Elsa, who is outside their door, with four suitcases in tow.
Inside the home, the couple are dealing with the demands of their two Gen Z kids, Alex (Ty Arnott) and Rosie (Brooklyn Davies), plus Peter is trying, or not, to deal with their boorish neighbour (Huw Higginson), and his demands over a shared wall.
This may be quickly adding up to an uncomfortable circumstance, but it is amped up even further when a Google search finds that Elsa is accused of murder, and more than one at that. While retaining all their middle-class English decorum, Peter and Debbie’s first thoughts are for the safety of their children, but they also grapple with how to tell Elsa to leave.
The disconnect between age-old British middle-class mores are further exacerbated with new and wider societal disconnects created by social media and its new forms of language. This action is quickly put to bed when the children find an ally in Elsa, as she navigates their lives in ways that the parents can’t fathom.
Meanwhile, the unnamed neighbour keeps pestering about the wall, and the play begins to oscillate between a comedy of manners and a farce, as slapstick and revolving door sequences are employed.
Throughout this fast-paced comedy, accomplished director Simon Phillips deals well with the disconnect of language, both in the cultural and the class sense, and even manages to imbue Elsa in a sympathetic light, despite the moral disparity.
That playwright Steven Moffat is highly regarded in English television is in no doubt, but it also feels that The Unfriend at times finds it difficult to leave the confines of a sit-com.
Thomson’s Elsa is a single note, bold and brassy performance, with little room for reflection, and the latest deaths in her along list of deadly accomplishments is played for laughs, adding to the moral ambiguity.
Tim Walter plays Peter with all the Britishness of their middle-class stations, never braving hard decisions in case they may offend, while Alex Lee’s Debbie soon shows resentment to this character flaw.
The kids, as played by Arnott and Davies, are exemplary Gen Z stereotypes, with all their self absorption and inability to navigate an emotional throughline within the family, but in end, with Elsa’s help, there is a transformation.
Higginson’s character of The Neighbour, where he portrays a slow and dim-witted person whose use of language is also riddled with ambiguity, causing him to struggle to articulate his problem. Also, right at the end, into the mix comes Ben Wood as a policeman, who becomes enthralled by Elsa’s commanding ways.
There is also another main character in The Unfriend, and that is Isabell Hudson’s stunning sets, which opens on a cruise liner on the high seas, before turning into an archetypical English suburban home in the second act.
This is no flat pack set, but one that is fully three dimensional, with more than a hint of order and with glimpses of the street beyond, while acting as a contrast to the action being played out within. If it were not for the fact that this play was written before Covid, it could also describe the current relationship between the USA and the UK.
The Unfriend comes with no social or moral redemption, but as a piece of entertainment, it is one that the audiences are devouring wholeheartedly.
The Unfriend
Roslyn Packer Theatre, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay (Sydney)
Performance: Monday 5 October 2026
Season continues to 31 October 2026
Information and Bookings: www.sydneytheatre.com.au
Images: The Unfriend – photos by Prudence Upton
Review: John Moyle