A portrait of a woman slipping through the cracks of Sydney's housing crisis. It's not a comfortable play—it’s a critical one.

About

Where do you go when you don’t have a home?

Coming home one night, Sandra learns she has two weeks to move out. It’s nothing personal, her housemates just have a friend who needs somewhere to stay. No choice but to pack up and find another sharehouse. But Sandra is in her 50s. And affordable places are hard to find in the ruthless Sydney rental market. In one interview after another, she contorts herself into the shape of what she thinks people want in a housemate. But with each rejection she becomes increasingly desperate, losing control of her life in frighteningly simple ways.

Brooke Robinson has written an unflinching examination of homelessness, asking how willing we are, as a society, to take care of our most vulnerable. As the housing crisis worsens, what happens to people like Sandra – to those who don’t own a home, who are getting older and don’t have family to fall back on?

Funny until it’s not, Good Cook. Friendly. Clean. is a devastating portrait of someone slipping through the cracks. It’s not a comfortable play—it’s a critical one. And under the direction of Marion Potts, looking away is not an option.

Cast & Creatives

Director Marion Potts
Designer Melanie Liertz
Lighting Designer Alexander Berlage
Sound Designer & Composer Nate Edmonson
With Fayssal Bazzi, Tara Morice, Kelly Paterniti

Performance Times

Preview 4 – 8 May
Opening Nights 9 & 10 May
Season 11 May – 16 June

Performance Times
Monday – Friday 7pm
Saturday 2pm & 7pm
Wednesday 6 June 2pm & 7pm

Meet The Artists
Tuesday 22 May

Video

Trailer, Good Cook. Friendly. Clean 

Lee Lewis on Good Cook. Friendly. Clean

Cast Interview, Good Cook. Friendly. Clean

 

Reviews

“Directed with a steady, compassionate hand by Marion Potts, Tara Morice’s Sandra is the centre of the play and you can’t look away from her for a second.” ★★★★ Cassie Tongue, Time Out

“The cast is a blessing: Tara Morice can do more with a look and prolonged silence than many can do with a full soliloquy, while Fayssal Bazzi and Kelly Paterniti are abundantly talented and able to carry off their various and wildly diverse characters and the weight of the action…Good Cook, Friendly, Clean should be at the top of your “to do” list.” Diana Simmonds, Stage Noise

“Playwright Robinson has identified something so ugly but so accurate, about modern Australia, and the reflection she offers up through the mirror of her play, is so hideous, it is almost unbearable to watch. We do of course, find ourselves mesmerised by the car crash scenario, a human catastrophe unfolding before our eyes, powerfully directed by Marion Potts who never once lets us off the hook.” Suzy Wrong, Suzy Goes See

“…an electric performance from Morice.” Jason Blake, Audrey Journal

Blog Posts

Sharehouse Horror Stories

26.04.18

Brooke Robinson‘s Good Cook. Friendly. Clean. follows Sandra (played by Tara Morice) as she spirals down a rabbit hole of ridiculous sharehouse interviews in the daunting midst of the Sydney housing crisis. In anticipation of the show’s opening, we asked you to send...

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A Sharehouse Like No Other

30.04.18

For those of you not familiar with Griffin’s Admin Head Quarters—it is, for want of an exact phrase, a ‘sharehouse’. A six-bedroom, one-bathroom, half-a-kitchen sharehouse—what a clean-shaven real estate agent would call ‘a burgeoning micro-garden with huge botanical potential’, aka...

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In Conversation with Brooke Robinson

25.05.18

Brooke Robinson is the playwright of Griffin’s second Main Season production for 2018, Good Cook. Friendly. Clean.. The play is darkly comic and sees a middle-aged woman spiral out of control as she desperately attempts to make herself marketable to the cruel...

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