The performances were tremendous. Pamela Rabe never better: tremendous acting, great movement and theatrical business – and she looks fantastic after all the workouts she’s been having with this delightful production. Phillip Quest excellent as the male hero antihero – handled all the rapid-fire changes of tone from hectoring to gruff love to newspaperman speeches superbly. Christopher Stollery did the straight man new fiancé well. Deidre Rubinstein;s performed superbly a harridan character with a tremendous amusing literary rant and then a short reprise of it later.

Some reviewers have said the play is a bit movie-esque and not sufficiently deeply developed but I disagree. After all The Front Page was a theatrical production first before it was converted to the movie starring Roz Russell and Cary Grant. And in my view having Hildy Johnson as a woman gave the play additional emotional resonance – rather than a boring bromance which might have arisen if Hildy was a man (like the Matthau:Lemmon movie) there was romance with Hildy a woman: artistically it opened the play out and gave it more emotion to add to the political and journalistic repartee. And what a script – it was originally written in the 30s but, adapted by John Guare, it has all the resonance of a fresh modern take on political venality, journalistic venality and the immorality of the fourth estate.

It was a long play: with intermission about three hours, but had no longeurs. The setup before intermission translated into tremendous screwball comedy, wordplay, physical antics and theatrical pleasure in the second half. The pace ran at machinegun tempo, but with excellent timing and rhythm. Bravo director Aidan Fennessy. Our group loved it. It’s fresh, it’s relevant to today, it speaks of ambition and career development and whether you can have it all. Its not having any Australian accents didn’t trouble me in the least.

This is a wonderful production, hugely enjoyable. Theatre goers from around Australia should flock to it. It will live in your memory.

As for criticising the fact that it’s a theatrical production of 1930s writing, I’m surprised to see criticism that a play was written more than 20 minutes ago: is one to apply the same ‘Why here? Why now?’ criticism to plays by those old fogeys Shakespeare or Moliere or Brecht or Ibsen or Williamson or Becket or Pinter or Rattigan or… ?

I hope the ABC or someone does a video/movie of this production. This bravura production is as memorable as the first movie and as well acted and directed.