Narelle is Sydney born and bred but lately she’s lost her sense of belonging. Something keeps bringing her back to Pyrmont. This peninsula was her family’s bedrock, and the home of her extraordinary grandmother June, who held everything together through the decades: a son’s brush with the law, a daughter’s battles with demons, a husband’s decline.
Life revolved around the sugar refinery. For a time this was the sweetest neighbourhood in the country. But the family bedrock, like the sugar, has dissolved away. Narelle can’t fix the past, but maybe she can fix the future.
A story of Sydney – work and corruption, family and massive social change. A story of how Australia went from working class to middle class.
‘Valentine, an essential Australian dramatist, writes the marginalised and oft-persecuted fringes of Australia into our dramatic canon with long-denied dignity and grace. The Sugar House is a gift of theatre; an exploration of who we were, who we are and who we wish we could be.’ TIMEOUT
