Time Out Sydney Arts & Culture Awards 2024: Best Performance in a Play Nominees

Heartfelt and heart-wrenching with great comic timing, Janet Anderson's career-defining performance in the debut Australian production of Overflow – a hilarious and devastating exploration of women’s bathrooms and the experiences of transgender women – will not be forgotten any time soon. Seemingly effortlessly, Anderson held the attention of everyone in her orbit, seamlessly switching gears to impersonate Rosie’s associates and their various British dialects. Anderson played Rosie as funny and smart and hurt, a person just trying to survive and find joy. She doesn't look for trouble; it finds her. 

British playwright Travis Alabanza's critically acclaimed one-act play made a mark on the local theatrical landscape when an all-trans- and gender-diverse team brought it to the Sydney stage with Darlinghurst Theatre Co in 2022. So lucky for us, it came back for Sydney Festival and a national tour in 2024.

Farmer Ray, played with impressive physicality and nuance by veteran actor Colin Friels, is the central figure of Into the Shimmering World – a new Australian epic penned by Angus Cerini (The Bleeding Tree, Wonnangatta) for Sydney Theatre Company. Helmed by a cast of legendary Aussie performers (including Kerry Armstrong playing opposite Friels as his wife, Floss) this future classic introduces us to a farming couple who have lived off the land their entire adult lives. But this is Friels’ show, and the veteran performer well and truly delivers. Into the Shimmering World is a superb drama, anchored by a stunning performance from Friels – clear-eyed, powerful and deeply affecting.

Set in post-war Hiroshima, Hisashi Inoue’s magical, intensely moving and timeless 1994 play finally arrived in Australia this past November (as translated by Roger Pulvers) thanks to Omusubi Productions and Red Line Productions. Co-director Shingo Usami starred in this two-hander as Takezo, a ghostly father who is lovingly haunting his 23-year-old daughter Mitsue (Mayu Iwasaki). After 25 years as a Japanese actor in Australia, this is the role he had been waiting for. Spirited, goofy and gruff, Usami's larger-than-life performance moved the story to profound emotional depths. He also seemed to discover an invisible lever which can make an audience gush tears. 

The John Waters of Sydney's theatre community, indie company Tooth and Sinew have put themselves on the map with thrilling original shows that push the boundaries of good taste with perverted puppets, rude clowns and apocalyptic allegories. So when they took on Henry James' haunting gothic thriller The Turn of the Screw, we were intrigued. Jack Richardson's standout performance as Miles was arguably the most horrible and moving construction of the play. Around ten years old (the character, not the actor), he’s a budding chauvinist and a horror of a child with slicked-back blonde hair and a snarling little pink mouth, out of which bursts perfectly elocuted charms and abuse. Richardson incarnated this monster-in-the-making with frightening, unforgettable ease.

Fresh from taking the West End by storm and winning the 2022 Olivier Award for Best Play Revival, Sydney Theatre Company brought Nick Payne’s luxuriantly romantic, multiversal love story to the local stage – complete with a stunning rotating stage encrusted with dried flowers. Opposite Johnny Carr as beekeeper Roland, Catherine Văn-Davies shone as quantum physicist Maryanne. Using the play's repetition to comedic and devastating effect, she made us fall in love with her in each possible scenario.