The Rocks is constantly in flux. In 1980, when Playing Beatie Bow was published, it was already under threat, as historic buildings were razed to make way for high-rise developments. Now, four decades later, little has changed. Rereading the novel, it’s hard not to wonder what Park would make of recent changes: the clearance of the Millers Point community to make way for the Crown Sydney casino, for example, or the transformation of the Hungry Mile into glittering Barangaroo. So it’s fitting that it should be a new stage adaption of Playing Beatie Bow that launches Sydney Theatre Company’s The Wharf, located just around the corner in Walsh Bay and newly back in business after an almost three-year refurbishment.

Most children in Sydney will be familiar with Park’s book, a highlight of Australian Young Adult literature since its release. Generations of children have tramped around The Rocks on school excursions, following Beatie’s footsteps.

The story follows the coming of age of sixteen-year-old Abigail Kirk (Catherine Văn-Davies). Recently arrived in The Rocks after the separation of her mother, Kathy (Lena Cruz), from her beloved father, Weyland (Tony Cogin), Abigail is angry, frustrated, and deeply hurt. One day, while watching the neighbourhood children play a game they call ‘Beatie Bow’, she notices a ragged-looking girl watching from the sidelines. She follows her through the twisting streets and finds herself in The Rocks of 1873, whisked into the world of the real Beatie Bow (Sofia Nolan) and her family, who emigrated from Scotland’s Orkney Islands years before. The Bow family matriarch, Granny Tallisker (Heather Mitchell), is convinced Abigail has arrived to ensure the family ‘gift’ is passed to future generations. Abigail just wants to go home.

Sofia Nolan as Beatie Bow and Catherine Văn-Davies as Abigail Kirk in Playing Beatie Bow (Daniel Boud)

Kate Mulvany is no stranger to Parks’s works, having also adapted The Harp in the South into a glorious, award-winning epic for Sydney Theatre Company in 2018. Somehow, that same magic for Playing Beatie Bow never quite takes off.

Mulvany wisely chooses to update the play to current-day Sydney, complete with laptops and mobile phones, as well as Covid jokes and social distancing. But with changes in time also come shifts in attitudes and understandings: about race, women, and, most importantly, the recognition that Australia was inhabited long before Europeans arrived. Park’s original novel is almost exclusively white: with the exception of two Chinese laundry workers, there are no characters of colour whatsoever. By transplanting the story to the twenty-first century, Mulvany takes the opportunity to broaden the novel’s scope and re-address this historical lack by foregrounding Indigenous experiences and allowing in new perspectives.

Abigail is now played by Vietnamese-Australian actor Catherine Văn-Davies. Watching the constant questioning her character receives as to her origins is a poignant reminder that immigrants have always been the heart of The Rocks. Mulvany has also introduced an Indigenous character, Johnny Whites (Guy Simon), a First Nations man mourning the forced removal of his children. The recounting of Johnny’s experiences and the use of snippets of Gadigal language bring into sharp focus how European settlement and the concept of Sydney as ‘home’ is predicated on the obliteration of Indigenous culture and the dehumanisation of its inhabitants.

STC Artistic Director Kip Williams directs the cast at a cracking pace that often prioritises the conflict of the characters over the play’s quieter moments. As a result, the audience never quite gets the chance to absorb the lessons the play has to offer. Nonetheless, the cast do an outstanding job, sharing multiple roles across both centuries. Particular credit should go to Heather Mitchell, who doubles as wise Granny and Abigail’s twentieth-century grandmother, Margaret; and to newcomer Ryan Yeates who steals every scene he is in as Beatie’s sickly brother, Gibbie. Văn-Davies, capturing the character of Abigail beautifully, balances her spikiness with hints of vulnerability and a child’s yearning for things to be made right in the world. Likewise, newcomer Sofia Nolan is outstanding as the stubborn Beatie. She battles to have the same access to education – and hence to a legacy – as her brothers.

Cast on the expansive set of Playing Beatie Bow (Daniel Boud)

David Fleischer’s set is spare but effective, conjuring up the essence of 2021 and 1873 with little more than a street lamp, a window, and a table. He is ably assisted by Nick Schlieper’s atmospheric lighting. In one particularly fine scene between Abigail and Beatie’s older brother Judah (Rory O’Keeffe), the vast sweep of Sydney Harbour is recreated through the unrolling of a single large piece of canvas.

Music, courtesy of composer Clemence Williams, choral director Natalie Gooneratne and others, is threaded through the production with care: the unearthly sing-song of children’s games is the vessel through which is audience is transported from one era to another, while the addition of shanties, songs, and lullabies – sung in English, Gadigal, and Vietnamese – add layers of meaning beyond the possibilities of the text.

The result is a production that should be lauded for expanding a beloved story to encompass all that it could and should be. Playing Beatie Bow was already a twentieth-century Australian classic for a reason. Now it fits the twenty-first century, too.

Playing Beatie Bow, presented by the Sydney Theatre Company, continues at The Wharf until 1 May 2021. Performance attended: February 26.

This project is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.