Kill The Messenger

24 February 2015 | 11:36 am | Danielle O'Donohue

"It’s a play that is supposed to make audiences uncomfortable."

Nakkiah Lui doesn’t have the answers but her second play Kill The Messenger is asking a lot of the right questions: big picture questions about racism, privilege and theatre’s role in exploring these things, but also much more personal questions about dealing with grief and how a person shares their personal stories.

With Lui herself playing a starring role and often stepping outside the action to address the audience, Kill The Messenger is at once both sharply funny and shocking. This is a play that lingers, whispering thoughts in your ear long after you’ve left the theatre, due in part to THE way Lui talks to us directly raising things that bother her, then reinforcing them in the acted scenes that intersperse her dialogue.

At its heart the play is about an Indigenous man who committed suicide after being turned away from a hospital despite suffering from stomach cancer, and about Lui’s grandmother who passed away after an accident at her home caused by the termites that the Department Of Housing had refused to deal with.

It’s a play that is supposed to make audiences uncomfortable, but Lui’s humour and warmth also make it a must see and confirms Lui as one of the brightest new talents in Australian theatre.

Belvoir Upstairs to 8 Mar

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