Zahra Newman in Wake in Fright (photograph by Pia Johnson)

Tydon isn’t racially identified in the novel, so making him South African is a curious decision – it suggests that nation’s own murky relationship to otherness, and is one of the ways that Greene subtly shifts the locus of the story. He also adds a discussion about the meaning of the town’s Indigenous name, which none of the white townsfolk seem to know. All of this represents not so much a reimagining as a logical expansion of Cook’s theme; Bundanyabba is a synecdoche for the nation, and its seething disgust with outsiders so quickly comes to represent our country’s own.

The play proper opens with the preparations for a suicide, a scenario from the novel that is turned from a shooting into a hanging. Even before this opening, there is a fascinating preamble, possibly Greene’s greatest contribution to the retelling and a rare example of a production that literally cannot exist without the actor performing in it: Newman seems, on paper, an odd choice for Wake in Fright, and yet within minutes it’s clear she is the only actor who can do it. She was born in Jamaica, and immigrated with her family to Australia when she was a young woman, so notions of otherness, and the ways this country commodifies and darkens its welcome, are central to her own experience.

Newman initially appears in a ridiculous promotional bear suit, which turns out to be a proxy for the very real, and very frightening, ‘Lead Ted’ who teaches the children of Broken Hill how to mitigate the overwhelming toxicity of their town. She goes on to recount an Uber ride she took with a driver from Broken Hill, who responded to questions about the well-documented lead poisoning with a chilling rejoinder: ‘Well, maybe we do things differently here.’ Any sense that the actor is merely representing an experience of the other, rather than living it every day, evaporates with the sharing of that anecdote.

Zahra Newman in Wake in Fright (photograph by Pia Johnson)

The first half of the show follows the book quite closely, brilliantly capturing the pummelling heat and snide grotesquery of the locals, even while it downplays Grant’s hubris and snobbery. He is more of an everyman here, unwillingly sucked into a vortex of alcohol and gambling, an innocent brought needlessly and mercilessly down. The two-up game is extraordinary, as Newman stands in the centre of a circle of lights and violent images flash on a giant screen behind her. The sequence is a kind of pinball nightmare, a ghastly descent into madness that provides a sample of a greater horror to come: the roo shoot.

It was Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 film adaptation that imprinted this scene onto the retina of all who saw it, so it is impressive to see Greene forge a distinctive theatrical language that can match it. Again, projected imagery and violent use of sound combine to profoundly disturbing effect; Newman, grinning diabolically, sits in the centre of this sequence like something out of a Boschian hellscape. It recalls Hitchcock’s spiralling nightmare in Vertigo, as well as countless images from the world of Ozploitation, and it is genuinely creepy. There is a sense that all our collective nastiness, the unlocked id of Australian culture, is being poured into a beer glass and offered back up to us for our delectation.

Zahra Newman in Wake in Fright (photograph by Pia Johnson)

The only truly baffling decision in this otherwise masterful adaptation is a subtraction rather than an addition. In the novel, the roo shoot ends in an obscured debauchery, and a suggested gay rape, that goes to the heart of the work’s critique of Australian toxic masculinity. It’s strange that Greene, a proudly gay man who has championed LGBTI representation on our stages, should omit this, particularly given how germane it is to his own reading of the work. It looks like an evasion, and unbalances the dramatic structure. Grant’s descent into suicidal despair is too abrupt, and the ratcheting dread quickly dissipates.

Technically, Wake in Fright is brilliantly accomplished and innovative. Too often at Malthouse, uncomfortable levels of sound and light are employed to create drama rather than augment it, but the sound composition and multimedia design, by art-electronica band friendships, is superbly integrated and supple. Verity Hampson’s lighting is evocative and menacing, and Greene’s direction tight and assured. Newman is a powerhouse, an actor who feels dangerously responsive, and she shifts effortlessly from expressionist to naturalistic, often in a single sentence. This is a new, and often thrilling, retelling of one of our most exposing stories, and it couldn’t have sat in better hands.

Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook, adapted for the stage by Declan Greene, is being performed at the Beckett Theatre, Malthouse from 21 June to 14 July 2019. Performance attended: June 26.