A lyrical homage to the spirit of the Australian bush, Sydney Theatre Company’s The Shiralee is set on the highways and byways of 1950s Australia, with brief visits to the urban squalor of Kings Cross.

Adapted by Kate Mulvany and directed by Jessica Arthur, there is something Shakespearean about the play’s shifting between the cruel city and the pastoral expanses of the bush.

Mulvany’s adaptation of the classic 1955 D’Arcy Niland novel tries to refocus the story through the perspective of Buster (Ziggy Resnick), the young girl asked to navigate an adult’s world of violence and exile.

When her father, a hardened swagman named Mac Macauley (a mesmerising Josh McConville), rescues her from neglect in Kings Cross, they are persued by police and hit the road to embrace the gruelling swag-man’s life.

Buster proves herself a resilient force who defies the harshness of their travails and helps her father confront his own childhood trauma.

The tranquillity of the bush plays an ever-present soothing role, despite the turmoils of the swaggies beneath her boughs. Jeremy Allen’s set design is clean, highly textured and full of colour.

Two impressive towering gum trees are wheeled slowly about on casters........

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