Machu Picchu

Sue Smith's new play Machu Picchu makes its Sydney debut tonight under the careful eye of STCSA Artistic Director Geordie Brookman. Lisa McCune, yes, the Lisa McCune, leads the production as Gabby, putting in a standout performance.

Gabby and Paul (Darren Gilshenan) are a middle-aged, middle class married couple, who get into a car accident. Paul is paralysed from the waist down. Both he and Gabby have to decide how they will live the rest of our lives — and in Paul's case, whether he will choose to live at all.

It's a play about expectation, hope, fear, tragedy. It looks at long-term relationships and how they fragment and coalesce, and what it really means to love someone.

But at points it feels like the characters' relationships to one another aren't fully fleshed out — there's something unsaid, some undercurrent not clearly elucidated that would make it easier for the audience to understand just how and why each character acts they way they do.

Machu Picchu is, however, beautifully structured — an easy watch, made easier by the nimble hand of Brookman, the pathos of McCune, and the clear and clever design of Jonathon Oxlade.

Is the play entirely successful? No. But with a little more time spent in development, teasing out what exactly led Gabby and Paul here, we could have something that illuminates both one of the more difficult human struggles, and the power of love.