He may be dead – fallen (or pushed) from the escarpment at the edge of the remote property – but Alec Hobbes, maths genius turned freely excreting Alzheimer’s sufferer, still has the women involved in his life spinning from his machinations in Alma de Groen’s probing 2002 play Wicked Sisters, which returns to Griffin Theatre Company (which premiered it) in a new production directed by Nadia Tess.

Which isn’t to say the women are incapable of forming conclusions of their own or snubbing his formulas. Unlike the “critters” – the AI motes of data that continue to breed, compete and die in Hobbes’ evolution simulation computer algorithm – the interplay between these middle-aged women isn’t quite so brutishly simple, nor so completely ruled by a single tyrannical force. Between humans, logical principles are just as slippery as ethical ones, and the either/or binary is fraught.

Vanessa Downing and Di Adams in Wicked Sisters. Photo © Brett Boardman

The four women of the play have come together for a weekend at the widow Meridee’s house, not long after Hobbes’ death. Bougie friends Lydia and Judith expect that they will drink wine, eat cheese and dispense consolations:...