With rave reviews during its Sydney run, The Wrong Gods makes a striking Melbourne debut, lighting up the Arts Centre’s Fairfax Studio. A co-production between Melbourne Theatre Company and Belvoir St Theatre, this new work appears as part of RISING: a festival of new art, music and performance.
After groundbreaking works like Counting and Cracking and The Jungle and The Sea, S. Shakthidharan once again delivers a story we rarely get to experience on Melbourne’s stages. Together with co-director Hannah Goodwin, he delivers a deeply personal, culturally rich, and politically charged piece that explores family, belonging and survival.
The story starts at the calming riverside home of Nirmala, played by Nadie Kammallaweera, and her daughter Isha, played by Radhika Mudaliyar. It’s a place where living off the land, backbreaking farming, and sharing crops is the only way of life. Brought to life by Keerthi Subramanyam’s limited but perfect set featuring a swing and a few plates of food, it allows the audience to perfectly visualise the world the pair are living in.
Isha is destined for more than life in the village. She’s a budding scientist who dreams about heading to the big city to study. She wants to meet new people and see what else is out there.
Nirmala is concerned about the threat of American ‘devil’ investors who want to take over the land. The devil arrives – but it’s an Indian girl named Lakshmi, played by Vaishnavi Suryaprakash. Representing the investors, Lakshmi takes a liking to Isha, promising joy in return for land. An unwilling Nirmala sees the happiness in Isha’s eyes and agrees to the deal in return for Isha’s education and boarding outside of the village.
As Nirmala and Isha, the rapport between Kammallaweera and Mudaliyar is exquisite. Over the course of the story, they perfectly shift between loving mother and daughter to an estranged pair, and back again. They achieve this with the smallest changes in facial expression, movements and gestures, perfectly heightening their performances as the stakes rise across the 90-minute show.
The dramatic tension is assisted by a brilliant soundscape of village motifs recorded by George Vlad. A phenomenal Indian-inspired soundtrack comes to life thanks to composer Sabyasachi (Rahul) Bhattacharya, alongside sound designer Steve Francis and associate Madeleine Picard. Amelia Lever-Davidson’s lighting choices also work perfectly to bring an unsettling vibe. This is especially true in the integral moments of the story.
Supporting the mother and daughter pairing is the aforementioned Suryaprakash as Lakshmi and Manali Datar as Devi. Together they blend seamlessly with the big personalities of Nirmala and Isha. They each have time to shine and show us why they are forces to be reckoned with.
In the back half of the show, Isha returns to her village after seven years away. She is a different person now — hardened, and aligned with the investors. Radhika deserves praise here for her detailed, subtle performance. With precise shifts in posture, tone, and expression, she captures Isha’s transformation into an uptight corporate figure. As her world starts to fall apart, those carefully crafted choices help guide the character’s gradual return to the young woman she once was.
At its heart, The Wrong Gods is a story about choices. What we sacrifice to survive, who we become when we leave, and whether we can ever truly return. The Wrong Gods is fierce, intelligent, and essential viewing and a bold work that brings underrepresented stories to the centre stage where they belong.
The Wrong Gods is co-produced by Melbourne Theatre Company and Belvoir St Theatre. It runs to 12 July at Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio, 100 St Kilda Road Melbourne.
Tickets: https://tickets.mtc.com.au/production/18885
Website: https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/whats-on/season-2025/the-wrong-gods/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/melbtheatreco/
Photo credits: Brett Boardman
