By Alexandre Douglas

“Fraser and the cast, I think, realised this, and the play was all the better for it – one does not simply pass through three stages of grief – it is constant … It was just an ordinary night, but I couldn’t help feeling a little changed.”

By Patrick McKenzie

“All Things Must Pass is deeply enjoyable, and delivers some fresh takes and thoughtful ruminations on the nature of celebrity.”

By Shania O’Brien

“Oliver Durbidge’s (director) rendition of the play is a haunting ode to the fears people think they leave behind when they outgrow bedtime stories … The direction and acting peeled away each individual’s layers and lay them bare for the audience to see.”

By Emily Graetz

“Rice is a brilliant return to live theatre in 2021. It is witty, dramatic and makes an important move towards telling more diverse and meaningful stories of immigration.”

By Victoria Vu Tang

“Ultimately, Rice is a production about women, and their legacy … But it is also a labour of love, galvanised by a dedicated cast and crew of BIPOC women and their allies who should be celebrated as much as this story is.”

By Danny Cabubas

“Utilising a brilliant mix of humour and seriousness, the show dove deep into one of the best explorations of grief and the trauma that comes with it I’ve ever seen.”

By Alexandre Douglas

“To my surprise, I left the theatre feeling genuinely moved. Director Annie Fraser has taken a script, parts of which have not aged well, cut and modified it, and put on a production that, unlike the original, does not exult its protagonist but rather meditates on the consequences of his narcissism.”

By Marlow Hurst

“What often felt like a Doctor Who Christmas special blossomed into a heartfelt and scathing examination of modern historiography and our mental constructions of historical characters.”

By Oscar Eggleton

“Yang builds the character from humble beginnings in the first Act into an immense exposé in the deterioration of Macbeth’s moral character. By the final Acts, Yang’s Macbeth is a manic, larger-than-life presence that looms over every scene.”

By Lilly Aggio

“Both Cabubas and Coffey do a remarkable job in showing an emotional depth through the peeling of layers away from their performative selves. In this way and many others, I think that director Margaret Thanos has done an excellent job.”

By Ellie Stephenson

“The lighting - at times pink, deep blue, or bright white - washes the theatre, giving the sense that Marianne and Roland’s love story occurs suspended in space; our stars inhabit the centre of a Cellar Theatre-sized multiverse.”

By Prudence Wilkins-Wheat

“Directors Ange Tran and Matthew Forbes took this starkly relevant dialogue-heavy script and energised it. What could have dragged, actually became an animated, moving commentary on one of the most politicised topics in modern times: the climate.”

By Margot Beavon-Collin

“SUDS’ Orlando was magnificent. I saw it three times during its run, and wish I had gone again. It represents everything that student theatre, and theatre in general, should aspire to be.”

By Emily Elvish

“The production utilises gender as both a symbol and an accessory, highlighting the intricacies of gender identity and the lengths that society still has to go to completely appreciate these complexities.”

By Shania O’Brien

“The Bleeding Tree is a triumph for first-time director Alice Stafford and first-time assistant director Katherine Porritt-Fraser. Produced by Margaret Thanos, Stafford and Porritt-Fraser’s rendition of the play is haunting and heavy, telling an atmospheric story of domestic abuse, murder, and decay.”

“Watching SUDS’ ‘Rhinoceros in Love’ reconciled the two identities I and many other students struggle with as the bridge between Asian and Western cultures.”

“With a razor-sharp wit, the production blends slapstick, farce and irony to provide audiences with one of the funniest plays of the year.”

“The three actors shared palpable chemistry and were a pleasure to watch. This play is incredibly thought provoking and engaging from start to finish.”

“Zoe Hinton and Alex Bryant excelled in their individual and combined performances of Moira and Peter, as the two were able to capture the intricacies of an adult relationship and skilfully command the tension the script naturally create.”

“SUDS’ latest production is a clever and beautiful creation … It alternates ably between the macabre, the poetic, the humorous, and the borderline hysterical, mulling over the nature of power and logic.”

“The verdict: stellar reviews to all the cast and crew. It was a wonderful experience to be in the audience and I recommend that you give it a watch.”

“All aspects of production were expertly tailored to the emotional subtext of the script and recurred throughout to unify the piece across all creative elements. It was quite possibly the tightest ensemble I have seen from SUDS this year.”

“SUDS’ production of Harold Pinter’s 1957 play, The Birthday Party, is filled with such charm that the opening scene leaves the audience equal parts captivated and perplexed.”

“Challenging, but with some light to balance its shade, The Dark Room was at its best in its most tender moments … All in all, The Dark Room demonstrated an impressive calibre of acting, direction and production that ends this year for SUDS on a high note.”

“… this is Black Hands’ clearest success – its capacity to transform a historical genre into a show that forces us to question our own ethics.”

“SUDS partners with Improv Theatre Sydney for a production which now proudly holds the badge of ‘world record for the longest continuous improvised theatre performance’.”

By The Brag

“It seems only fitting that a society that has contributed so much to the Australian theatre industry should perform one of the greatest stories of Western mythology.”

By The Sydney Morning Herald

“You arrive nervous and green and then suddenly you're a part of it.”

“… history suggests that, come hell, or slowly rising damp, or asbestos, or faulty electrics, the society will make the most of it.”

By the ABC

“The Sydney University Dramatic Society (SUDS) has spawned some of Australia's leading actors, directors, playwrights and even the odd prime minister.”

By Virginia Gay for the Sydney Morning Herald

“We had lofty ambitions – people were putting on elaborate and innovative productions of huge plays, Hamlet, Marat/Sade, Corpus Christie, Streetcar, with the attitude that this was the kind of work they'd like to see in main stage shows, just with none of the budget.”

By Katherine Porritt-Fraser, for Pulp Media

“The Bleeding Tree paints a nuanced and complicated picture of survivors of violence. It gives them the complexity their stories have always deserved. It is not the glossy, polite theatre we are used to, and that is what makes it powerful. It is gritty, messy, challenging and unapologetic. It won’t let you look away from the story it’s trying to tell.”

By Jonah Dunch, for Pulp Media

“I peek into the Cellar Theatre, where cast and crew are busy setting up for one of the final rehearsals of Younger and Smaller. They follow me back out of the Cellar’s black-walled, postered lobby and up the narrow concrete stairs to sit in a circle on the lawn. Actor Frank Yang is still wearing his head, and director James Mukheibir—despite the quick turnaround on this three-week production cycle—is managing not to lose his.”

By The Sydney Morning Herald

"It captures that moment they all shared –that sense of wonderful possibilities that getting into Sydney University at this time represented. This group of students certainly made the most of it: they created at Sydney University a remarkable ripple that a decade later became the new wave of Australian theatre and filmmaking."

By Matthew Forbes, for Honi Soit

“With performances dating back to 1883, SUDS has long been a welcoming hub for artistic expression and diversity. Many active members of the society, however, feel that there is still work to be done in ensuring the inclusion of creatives from a wider scope of backgrounds – specifically, those of a non-cisgender identity. This lack of representation is what the team behind SUDS’ first main production of 2020 – ‘Slot 1’ – are hoping to rectify as they bring Sarah Ruhl’s stage adaptation of the seminal novel Orlando to the Cellar Theatre.”

By Honi Soit

“Dating back to the early parts of last century, the burgeoning S.U. Dramatic Society (SUDS) had no on-campus theatre to call home. The smaller SUDS productions were staged in Wallace Theatre or in the upstairs rooms of what is now the Holme Building; and the larger, more spectacular productions were staged in the Great Hall.”

By Patrick Morrow and Peter Walsh, for Honi Soit, in memory of Elliot, the 2015 SUDS social secretary and an avid performer and contributor to the performing arts community in USYD

“He leaves behind a far longer lifetime’s worth of brilliant memories, and a renewed urgency: do everything you can, as well as you can; trust the things and people you love, and love them hard. Be fearless, be direct and be kind. None of us can afford to waste any time.”

By Edward Furst for Pulp

“Bell once wrote that if you “were a serious theatre goer and wanted Shakespeare, Aristophenes, Beckett, Sartre, Brecht, or anything experimental’, you had to take in SUDS or the Players”, the latter being a rival dramatic society on campus at the time.”

By Honi Soit

“Part of the Cellar Theatre’s ceiling collapsed on the evening of Thursday, June 1, forcing the Sydney University Dramatic Society (SUDS) to cancel the remaining nights of their current production, The Normal Heart, which opened on Wednesday.”