“… exceptionally beautiful and awful all at once”
Fiona Hallenan-Barker
4 cold glasses of milk out of 5.
Venue: Old Fitz Theatre
Sydney
Dates: Until 19th June
Premiering in London in 2015 and recently revived in Melbourne, Simon Longman‘s Milked arrives at the Old Fitz for an extended Sydney season. This intimate chamber piece for two actors is at its strongest when it allows performance and character to take centre stage, leaving audiences to grapple with questions of masculinity, economic disenfranchisement, and the emotional paralysis of young men stranded between adolescence and adulthood.
Set amongst the rolling green hills of Herefordshire, Milked follows Snowy and Paul, two young men whose lives have stalled before they have properly begun. Faced with the suffering of a cow named Sandy, they find themselves incapable of decisive action, their fear, shame and confusion manifesting in increasingly frustrating and tragic ways.
Longman’s writing paints a bleak portrait of contemporary masculinity: a generation of men in their twenties who remain emotionally stranded, behaving less like adults than frightened children. These are characters who would rather sit with discomfort than seek help, for themselves or for the animal whose suffering unfolds before them. The play’s central moral tension lies in this prolonged inaction. Sandy’s eventual death is framed less as an act of violence than as a release from suffering, raising uncomfortable questions about responsibility, cruelty, and compassion.
There is a fascinating contradiction at the heart of Longman’s work. Unlike many of the angry young men who populate the canon of twentieth-century British drama, Snowy and Paul are not driven by malice. Instead, Longman suggests their vulnerability and humour might somehow mitigate selfishness. Whether audiences accept that proposition will likely determine their response to the play.
The production is anchored by two exceptional performances. James Provis‘s Snowy ricochets through the evening with warmth, nervous energy and cheeky charm, bouncing his way through every encounter. There is a sense that Provis could be unleashed even further physically, but his performance remains consistently engaging and deeply human. Aaron Wilson’s Paul is an effective counterpoint: tightly wound, trembling with anxiety and frustration. Together, the pair create a believable and compelling relationship that carries the audience across the Herefordshire countryside despite the reality of sitting inside a gritty inner-city pub theatre. Their work is so assured and engaging that Milked feels destined to become a pilgrimage production for emerging actors and drama students, while local casting directors would be wise to take note. Both performers display remarkable emotional intelligence, technical precision and generosity towards one another, making the evening a two-hander delight.
Director Simon Porro demonstrates a strong grasp of intimacy and scale, leaning into cinematic imagery while maintaining focus on the complex emotional bond between the two men. The production finds beauty within bleakness and humour within despair, allowing the friendship to remain recognisable even as the characters’ behaviour becomes increasingly difficult to defend.
Alice Vance‘s set design is particularly inspired. The locker-room aesthetic cleverly evokes both rural masculinity and emotional stasis, while Ashley Reid’s costumes support the actors’ physical choices and characterisation without drawing undue attention to themselves. Luna Yuet Yee Ng’s lighting design effectively shapes the emotional landscape of the piece.
The one significant misstep is Johnny Yang‘s sound design and composition. While clearly considered, the score often feels overly didactic, signalling emotional shifts with a heavy hand and frequently treating moments of genuine feeling with the same intensity as scene transitions. In doing so, it flattens some of the carefully crafted tension and undercuts humour that the actors have worked hard to establish. Several complex and poignant scenes threaten to tip unnecessarily into melodrama as a result.
A particularly effective moment involving a phone call to Paul’s mother hints at cycles of failure and inherited dysfunction. Yet the play never allows such explanations to become excuses. The brutality of Snowy and Paul’s treatment of Sandy remains in constant tension with their self-pity and narcissism.
Milked is both exceptionally beautiful and awful all at once, a compassionate but unsparing examination of young men trapped by their own emotional limitations. Snowy and Paul desperately seek the milk of human kindness for themselves, yet remain unable to extend the same compassion to a long-suffering cow. It is this contradiction that lingers long after the final scene.
Beautifully acted, sharply directed and deeply unsettling, Milked leaves audiences questioning not only what it means to grow up, but what happens when we are forced to.
Fiona Hallenan-Barker, Theatre Now
