*** Given the unprecedented global health crisis we currently face, Belvoir has made the difficult but necessary decision to cancel all  performances of girl friend. Although our venue’s capacity is less than 500, we are being cautious and following the government’s directive to restrict public gatherings. The health and safety of our audience, staff and actors is always our first priority.

If you purchased a ticket to girl friend, please consider donating the amount to the producing company New Ghosts Theatre Company to help them recover costs involved in the production. To donate your ticketed amount or to discuss refund options call box office on 9699 3444 or email [email protected]***

Everyone does a bad thing now and then. But Madhavi Rao did one of the worst things of all. The real life accomplice to the 1997 murder of Joe Cinque in Canberra, Madhavi managed to slip through several legal loopholes and come out completely unscathed. Where she is (and who she is now) is anyone’s guess.

girl friend is a darkly hilarious traipse into what happens to the best of us, when we become the worst of us.

“Like a lot of people, I’m obsessed with true crime. The banality of it, the dramatics of it, the too-close-to-home-ness of it. This case struck me so deeply because these women murderers grew up in wildly identical circumstances to myself. Questions began to bubble at the back of my mind: how far away am I from becoming these women, really? What does it actually take for someone to throw their moral compass completely out the window? Could I set this entire thing in a supermarket and make it a comedy?” says Somasundaram.

An intensely covered news story at the time, the bizarre circumstances surrounding the murder have inspired many artists in the form of books, theatrical plays and film. All of these works have been authored by Caucasian writers, often inexplicably erasing or sidelining both murderer Anu Singh and Madhavi’s cultural background (Indian-Australian), and its potential relationship to their behaviour.

“Whilst I am deeply unsettled by domestic violence, I am also deeply unsettled by the strangeness of cultural erasure in dissecting crime. The public, creative and commercial response to the crime, more-so than the crime itself, certainly speaks worlds about the internal state of a community.” – Natesha Somasundaram

Presented by New Ghosts Theatre Company with the Ignite Collective.