“MEET Noeline. By Tonight You’ll Hate Her Too.” screamed Britain’s The Sun newspaper, heralding the arrival of Sylvania Waters, the 90s series that turned one Australian family into an international spectacle. Billed as a real-life soap opera, it became the world’s first reality TV show, and it changed how we watch, and judge, each other.
A co-commission between the BBC and the ABC, Sylvania Waters caused a furore and wrote the blueprint for the Real Housewives, Big Brothers, Love Islands and Kardashians to follow. It sparked fierce debate about editorial ethics, class and the changing face of Australia.
But is also left a real family to live with the consequences.
Antoinette Barbouttis’s stage adaptation returns to the Donaher-Baker family with warmth and care to encourage a fresh appraisal of this period.
Funny, generous and quietly devastating, it asks what the camera, and the audience, did to them, and what it has been doing to all of us ever since.
