When David Williamson’s play The Removalists premiered in 1971, it was unlike anything that had been seen on Australian stages. Even though locally made theatre came to the fore with the success of Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1955, most works presented here were still overseas imports for middle-class audiences.
Williamson’s work was profane, violent and provocative, an examination of social conditioning, privilege and the abuse of police power that was an indictment of Australian society at the time. It remains shockingly relevant in 2025.
Read my full review at The Saturday Paper
Photos: Pia Johnson
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