This one-hander starring and co-created by Zahra Newman begins with a prologue featuring a cute-but-creepy bear mascot and a conversation the actor may or may not have had with an Uber driver about where each of them was from. He hailed from Broken Hill, which Newman observed was struggling with an ongoing problem of lead poisoning due to mining.

Wake in FrightMalthouse Theatre’s Wake in Fright. Photo © Pia Johnson

Broken Hill, the outback town where the 1971 film adaptation of Kenneth Cook’s novel, Wake in Fright, was shot. It’s a story full of Aussie archetypes and contradictions, which were indirectly touched on in that uncomfortable conversation between Newman and the driver. Post-prologue, she grapples with them mightily, asking what it means to be Australian. What it means to be a ‘good bloke’, and whether we are as hospitable to strangers as we might like to think.

Written and directed by Declan Greene, this new adaptation of Wake in Fright makes a few telling changes to the tale, most notably the ultimate fate of main protagonist, John Grant. Essentially it’s the same, however: this young teacher stops in the remote, rough-and-ready mining town of Bundanyabba,...