On the opening night of Melbourne Theatre Company’s new production of David Williamson’s The Removalists, director Anne-Louise Sarks invited onto the stage five of the actors who had performed in the play’s original 1971 production: Kristin Williamson, Fay Byrne, Paul Hampton, Bruce Spence (who also directed), and David Williamson, who played the eponymous removalist. (Peter Cummins, who played the lead character of Simmonds, died in late 2024.)

For many of those who stood and applauded the original cast, it would have been a bittersweet moment. The original production of The Removalists was fostered by one of the stalwarts of independent theatre in Melbourne, Betty Burstall, and was performed before an audience of forty people at the nascent La Mama Theatre, a theatre that in 2025, for the first time in its long history, has been forced to go dark.