REVIEW: Do Not Go Gentle - Queensland Theatre Company

Do Not Go Gentle

Presented by: QLD Theatre Company

Venue: Bille Brown Theatre

Date Attended: 21 August 2026

Playwright: Patricia Cornelius

Director: Heather Fairbairn

Assistant Director: Kate Wilson

Set and Costume Designer: Simone Romaniuk

Lighting Designer: David Walters

Sound Designer: Julian Starr

Composer: Alan John

Photographer: Stephen Henry

“The elements have aged us.”

Five explorers traverse the merciless Antarctic wilderness, looking like overstuffed penguins and hoping history will remember them as more than popsicles with a purpose. It does, but not quite as they hoped.

Written by acclaimed Australian playwright Patricia Cornelius, Do Not Go Gentle takes Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed 1911 expedition to the South Pole and gives it an entirely different traveling party: five aging residents whose memories, identities, and realities are slipping away. They envision themselves as Scott and his team, transforming the frightening, disorienting landscape of dementia into an Antarctic quest requiring just as much courage and endurance.

First written in 2006, the play has earned significant accolades. Its title comes from Dylan Thomas’ poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, urging his dying father to fight against death rather than quietly surrender to it. That defiance runs right through Cornelius’ characters. I was honoured to be invited to experience this production. A stage populated so prominently by older performers is a rarity, and I can’t remember seeing anything quite like it.

Simone Romaniuk’s stark design transports us somewhere cold and inhospitable. White walls and flooring enclose the stage, mirrored surfaces expand the space, and suspended sheets transform into snow, ice, tents, or whatever else this unstable landscape requires. But Antarctica fractures, identities shift, memories drift, and another reality emerges. The white wilderness merges with aged-care corridors, blurring the line between being lost on the ice and lost inside a fading memory. Even the stage management team (dressed in beige scrubs) blends into the action like carers. Initially, all the actors are buried beneath heavy expedition gear. Slowly, those layers come away, giving way to pajamas, canes, and shakier bodies. Time, it turns out, may be the harshest element of all.

Cornelius offers no neat linear plot to cling to. Scott narrates from his expedition diary as those around him speak in fragments, arguments, memories, stories, and sometimes complete nonsense. Characters drift in and out of one another’s realities without necessarily understanding where they are, who they’re speaking to, or even who they themselves once were. At times, it’s genuinely difficult to follow. Identities overlap, realities change without warning, and the expedition can seem almost as directionless to us as it does to its travelers. As the aged-care setting comes into focus, though, that disorientation gains purpose. We’re constantly losing our bearings alongside people who are losing theirs.

Cornelius also finds plenty of wit amongst the confusion. Residents bicker, contradict themselves, or even produce beautifully articulate thoughts. A rapid exchange about everyone’s various physical ailments is particularly funny (especially as they collectively insist their minds remain perfectly healthy). Then there are the things the writing refuses to soften: the pain of aging, dementia, war trauma, losing independence, forgetting the people who love you, and facing death. The possibility of choosing one’s own ending (VAD) when suffering becomes unbearable enters the conversation... alongside the stubborn desire to continue:“I’m too invested in the journey to cut it short.”

The ensemble comprises William Zappa, Jennifer Flowers, Steven Grives, Christen O’Leary, Andrew Buchanan, Marilyn Richardson, and, at the performance I attended, cover Bryan Probets, who stepped into the roles normally performed by Bruce Spence.

William Zappa provides a steady presence as Scott, stubbornly persisting with the expedition and documenting the journey as his companions grow less stable. “I should’ve done more with my life,” one admits, while another reflects, “I never had a sense of the world beyond me.” Cue the debate club, as they squabble over what it means to achieve greatness, contribute to society, and what exactly makes a life well spent.

Jennifer Flowers is an absolute delight as Wilson. She remains cheerfully resilient and her optimism has a deliciously offbeat quality, as though she’s wandered into an alternate universe to everybody else where everything is just peachy. Later, as Mary, Flowers brings tremendous comic instinct to the chaos of memory loss, all while keeping the real Mary shining through like a beacon in a foggy brain.

Steven Grives brings a much tougher, rougher edge to Evans, enduring the expedition with the tenacity of a grumpy old bear. He complains about the conditions, grumbles about everything his body is being asked to withstand, and still keeps trudging onward. That makes Evans’ eventual decline particularly affecting. As the first of the expedition party to die, his loss alters the entire journey. Watching this seemingly indestructible man finally succumb makes mortality suddenly much harder to ignore, and Grives gives the scene genuine sadness.

Christen O’Leary’s as Bowers is an intriguing character, like a fortress with unyielding and guarded walls. Once a journalist, Claudia now faces the world with a defensive stance, bewildered by a reality that seems foreign to her. It's especially sad to see her fervently recite directions as she grapples with her own disorientation. Plus, she’s frightened of her own family because she no longer recognises them. That landed hard for me. Memories might fade, but the grip of fear is much harder to shake.

Bryan Probets has the considerable task of taking on Oates (performing with the script in hand), yet that practical necessity barely gets in the way. His character quivers at the howl of something following him and searches desperately for what initially seems to be his dog. Spoiler alert: the eventual revelation of what he’s actually lost is a punch in the gut! His story unfolds into father-son trauma and the psychological scars of war, giving earlier questions about heroism a much darker weight. “How is being killed or killing someone making a contribution?” Probets’ final scenes are deeply affecting, with his exposed distress making them some of the most emotional moments of the show.

Andrew Buchanan occupies a fascinating position within the production because, unlike Scott and his intrepid squad of Antarctic adventurers, Andrew isn't out there freezing his toes off. Instead, he moves between several smaller but important characters orbiting their fractured memories and present-day lives. He appears as Claudia’s distraught husband, desperately trying to reach the woman who no longer recognises him, as the head of the aged-care centre, and as the shell-shocked soldier at the centre of Oates’ devastating memories of his son. And if that’s not enough, he even embodies the unseen creature haunting the Antarctic landscape, shifting into a more abstract presence.

Then there’s Marilyn Richardson as Maria, who exists outside the expedition and brings a dreamlike quality to proceedings. At 90 years young, Richardson still has a striking classical voice, and she gets several opportunities to use it throughout the production. Her operatic singing drifts through the action alongside old vinyl records and classical music, evoking the familiar soundscape of a retirement home. Speaking with a Serbian accent, Maria repeatedly longs to go home, suggesting a woman displaced from her country and clinging to a place that still feels familiar.

Heather Fairbairn’s direction allows reality to shift without warning. People wander into memories, conversations, and identities, and we’re expected to find our footing alongside them. It can be frustratingly elusive, but that confusion suits characters whose own memories offer no clear signposts. Fairbairn also gives this veteran ensemble room to remain fiercely individual, never reducing anyone to a symptom, diagnosis, or symbol of aging. And that’s where Do Not Go Gentle really finds its heart. These people are tired. Their bodies are changing. Yet they still love, flirt, grieve, argue, sing, laugh, resist, and search for meaning.

By the final stretches of the journey, the heroic expedition has fallen away. What remains is far more ordinary, and perhaps more frightening: human beings facing the reality that every journey eventually ends. The audience around me grew noticeably emotional as the final pieces fell into place. Somewhere nearby, I could hear someone openly sobbing. That reaction says a lot.

Queensland Theatre Company gives Cornelius’ work a visually arresting, deeply human production, led by a remarkable group of performers. Eventually, the snow disappears, the costumes come off, the expedition ends, and history moves on. But these characters still refuse to go gently.