Sweat, Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf Theatre, Wharf 1, 11 Nov-22 Dec

 Lynn Notage's 2015 play deals with a small town in crisis, as the employees of a steelworks gather in the local bar to largely bitch, moan and blow off some steam. The world financial crisis is hitting elsewhere and Cynthia is in with a chance of finally being promoted off the factory floor. But soon it becomes clear that bad times are coming to everyone and some of the decisions Cynthia has to make will create a rift between her and her old friend Tracey, and lead to repercussions for both of their sons. 

In some ways the play is a little bit of a bait-and-switch, particularly with the way it's promoted and cast - the casting of Paula Arundell as Cynthia and Lisa McCune as Tracey leads you to assume the play will revolve largely around them, but the play is looking more widely across the cast and finds its closing drive in focusing on the two young men playing their sons. There's a rich array of experience looking at the effects of economic downturn on a small town in Pennsylvania across several different people - the effects on their lives and on their expected futures. It's never dryly doctrinaire or an uninvolved debate, either - it's intensely personal and human. 

There is some unevenness in direction - McCune and Arundell are, as suits their status as experienced performers, given a chance to play a wide range, from McCune's initial ingratiating self-deprection that turns sour as hope dies up and her resentments turn outwards, to Arundell's joy that turns bitter as she finds herself having to tell long term friends hard truths that they refuse to listen to. But the performances of James Fraser and Tinashe Mangwana as the sons feel a lot more one-note - there's not quite the variety of reaction that these roles need, though they both play into the shattering nature of the final two scenes. Gabriel Alvardo makes a character who could feel like a point being made into something a lot more human, someone who makes the wrong decisions for the best of reasons. Yure Covich as bartender Sta plays intermediary so well and pays such a brutal price for his choice to try to stand up in the face of extremism in a way that breaks the heart. 

Jeremy Allen's design of the bar is impressively solid - a gritty, neon dive that you can almost smell the spilt beer in. I don't think it's a perfect production, or even necessarily a perfect play, but it is gripping and powerful and very thought provoking, even being written in 2015 meaning it's technically pre-Trump while explainign some of the setups for why he's a thing.