STRONG IS THE NEW PRETTY
STRONG IS THE NEW PRETTY, Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre, SOH, 22 October-12 December 2026.
Fresh to Sydney from its Brisbane Festival premiere and a regional tour, Strong Is The New Pretty is the newest play from Suzie Miller. This time, after fabled one-woman tours de force, she has put eight actors on stage for a docudrama with wit, comedy, heart, and balls – gleaming, red leather Sherrin balls.
The play begins with one of those balls spotlit in the middle of a black void (set design Christina Smith). High up on either side of the stage are four banks of stadium lights (lighting design Paul Jackson). Otherwise, it’s the cast of eight women taking us from the thwarted dreams of a little girl to the first AFLW Grand Final in a condensed and thrilling history of how small girls could dream and how women finally got to play AFL: seriously and professionally. And how, at the same time, they were and are insulted, threatened, and scorned by the national tribe of mannikins who fear and loathe women.
Complementing the Miller script and chosen characters are brilliant choreography (Kelley Abbey), music (Clemence Williams), sound and vocal effects (Brady Watkins), video (Craig Wilkinson) and the guiding hand of director Sarah Giles. Together with Amber McMahon, Amy Hack, Amy Ingram, Edyll, Contessa Treffone, Lucy Bell, Nyasha Ogden and Tara Morice, they make a winner out of what in lesser hands could have been a worthy history and account of little interest to those who care less about footy.
As it is, what is presented in a kaleidoscopic mix of words, music, sound, dance and irreverence is a human, heartwarming true story of how ordinary can be forged into extraordinary if enough pressure is applied. It’s that simple, and that complex. In the telling, the key players in what turned out to be a decades-long arm wrestle with boardroom sexism and societal misogyny appear in what the playwright describes elsewhere as “a fictional imagining by the playwright of true events.”
Consequently, the AFL’s first female commissioner Sam Mostyn is Alison Newtown (Lucy Bell). The “godmother” of the code and first female footy development manager, Jan Cooper, is Jane Hooper (Tara Morice), while AFP officer and frustrated kids coach Bec Goddard morphs into Bev Heath, Adelaide Crows coach (Amber McMahon). All reported on by the once derided female broadcast TV sports journo, Samantha Lane – rebranded as Susannah Knowles (Contessa Treffone). And if you want to know more, read Lane’s book Roar, subtitled “the stories behind AFLW – a movement bigger than sport.”
Strong Is The New Pretty is as much about Australian society and its women as it is about sport. And, as mostly always, the truth is better than fiction anyway. Take the first-ever women’s Grand Final – set for the Gabba and cancelled at two days’ notice because the high heels of Adele concertgoers had ruined the paddock. No matter: they pivoted. It was played on the Gold Coast instead.
Meanwhile, onstage, the gals – when not doubling as a honking, swilling, cussing, bloke chorus – get to harmonise some Adele, who gave Suzie Miller the rights to the songs on account of loving her work. That saved what might otherwise have cost a fortune – or just cutting the tunes. Money. When Channel Seven came sniffing, thanks to Sam Lane, the prospect of live television finally woke AFL’s suits to the potential.
Nevertheless, although we know there’s a happy ending (for the Adelaide Crows, not so much for the Brisbane Lions), drama prevails. It’s present at every turn through the all-too-believable obstacles, hostility and opposition faced by women who simply wanted to play football and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Like footy itself, the pace rarely flags, even for a moment. The team is a united, seamless group of actors at the top of their form. You feel they could win anything, and they need to, at a time when the so-called manosphere lurks, when femicide is an almost daily occurrence. It’s an exhilarating and timely tonic: take it and savour.
