A few years ago, Darwin playwright Mary Anne Butler won a whole swag of major literary awards for her play, Broken, including the $100,000 Victorian Premier's Literary Award – the first time a play had won the award. Now the play is finally getting its Melbourne premiere in a production directed by Melbourne independent theatre stalwart and Helpmann nominee, Susie Dee.
Broken is a play very much about the centre of Australia, weaving together the stories of three people on one fateful night. It concerns a woman who crashes her car in the Central Desert and is discovered by a man returning home from work. Both their lives are shaken up in extraordinary ways by this chance encounter.
In our four-star review of the play's Sydney premiere in 2016, we said: "Butler’s writing is poetic, evocative and muscular in a way rarely seen on Australian stages."
The Melbourne premiere will be a brand new production starring Lyall Brooks, Sophie Ross and Naomi Rukavina.