DIXON AND DAUGHTERS

By Diana Simmonds

September 21 2026

DIXON AND DAUGHTERS, Tiny Dog Productions at the Old Fitz, 20 September-3 October 2026. Photography by Campbell Parsons

With a face as kindly as granite and a voice as undeniable as Yorkshire pudding with gravy, matriarch Mary (Vanessa Downing) returns home after a stint in prison. Her crime isn’t immediately obvious, but over the course of ten minutes or so, as her two daughters, Bernie and Julie (Linda Nicholls-Gidley and Romney Hamilton) and uni student granddaughter Ella (Danette Potgieter) try to make her re-entry as pleasant as possible, enough clues are provided: she committed perjury to protect her husband, now deceased.

Such were his crimes; however, his grave has been defaced with graffiti, and Mary is at loggerheads with the world – and her daughters – over her support of him. The root causes hang in the air, almost visible. All Mary wants is to sleep in her own bed, and she’s furious that someone has been using it. What will that have done to her memory foam underlay? Her rage grows volcanically when it’s revealed that Julie has invited step/adopted daughter Briana (Sarah Jane Starr) to join the welcome home.

Briana is to colourful defiance what Julie is to beige timidity. Julie isn’t very bright, and that fuels the fire of her mother’s sharp intelligence and disparaging cruelty. It’s not a happy homecoming. And it’s made even more difficult when prison waif, Leigh (Rylea Eilis), turns up on Mary’s promise of a bed and care while she gets back on her feet. Missing from the gathering is Julie’s son, Michael: he’s chosen homelessness over family.

Brit playwright Deborah Bruce wrote Dixon and Daughters in 2018, but Covid delayed its staging until 2023, at the National. Its Sydney opening moments mean absorbing the set and props designed by new NIDA graduate, Mia MacCormick, as well as costume and props designer, Amelie Brown. We learn a lot, consciously or otherwise, from the levels and structure of Mary’s home. It’s probably an ex-Council house that’s seen better days, and if random disturbances in the atmosphere and lights are anything to go by, worse nights too. (Lighting: Topaz Marlay-Cole.)

Hints and clues as to why Mary was imprisoned and why she is hanging on to peak deniability start to become disturbing. Added to that, Ella has her own secrets, Briana is determined to connect with or confront Mary no matter what, and Home Sweet Home it is not.

Director Kim Hardwick has an outstanding cast and does outstanding things with each member. There is unexpected wit and humour in the play, and Vanessa Downing makes the subtle most her comic moments. They make her primary role as an unrelenting battle-axe even more powerful. And behind that power is a truth of which she is possibly unaware: that coercive control is a named thing, no matter how she refuses any idea of culpability in it. The play is also a multi-layered portrait of the generation-to-generation trauma and pain that’s the inevitable result of such behaviours.

Linda Nicholls-Gidley and Romney Hamilton share a “look” that sometimes has them thought to be sisters and, as Bernie and Julie, it’s impossible not to watch and not be mesmerised by how each copes, or not, with unfolding events. The pain, hope, exasperation and bewilderment eddying around them are palpable. Entwine that with the fizzing sass and refusal to be beaten of Sarah Jane Starr’s Briana (not her name, Mary snidely insists); and the bittersweet cocktail of worldly and innocent that makes Leigh and Ella – the result is internal and external combustion.

These three generations of Yorkshire women embody the spirit and resistance of a people accustomed to the rough end of the pineapple, as well as the disdain of a London that owns the pineapples. Although not overt, the brutality of British class warfare plus a hundred generations of women’s oppression is the bedrock of a play that gradually reveals how Mary came to resemble an Easter Island statue. And why her daughters and granddaughter cannot share the audience’s insight. It’s actually sketchy, belligerent Leigh who touches what remains of her maternal heart, and that’s another thing that baffles her relatives.

At just 90 minutes, Dixon and Daughters is remarkably dense with story and detail of the women we know over two tense and emotion-flooded days. The core revelations and immediate consequences need not so much a trigger warning as a fully loaded semi-automatic, to aim at the patriarchy. It’s a powerful, modern but infuriatingly timeless play, overflowing with a rich mix of the human and inhuman, and memorable performances. Not to be missed.