Last Train to Freo

We are thrilled to invite you to Fremantle Theatre Company’s exciting new production of the 20-year revival of the Patrick White Award-winning play "The Return" by Perth's own champion of the theatre Reg Cribb. Reg will be directing this fresh edition of this thrilling show, speeding down the tracks as the "Last Train to Freo".

Last Train to Freo is set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a Perth train compartment where two rough misfits take advantage of a guards' strike to terrorise the occupants.

Cribb was inspired to write the play after he witnessed two thugs harassing an attractive woman on a Midland to Freo train, and what he has written in response is an inspired, richly layered, dramatic story with several themes intertwined and unravelling as one.

The work tackles the treaty of brotherhood and revenge, from two very different angles.
Influenced by personal tragedy, the main theme of the play explores the ever-present violent element in society, and our fragile sense of relative security and/or vulnerability. Of course, Last Train to Freo also deals with the other side of this shiny coin; how the socially disenfranchised feel eternally on the outer of mainstream society.

The play is a ticking time-bomb, winding-up-and-up energetically, as the train approaches its final destination: Fremantle. At each new stop, more is revealed about the passengers and the tensions that unite them. And along the way, the work tears open some key discourses that rippled through the Perth social climate at that time, and quite unsurprisingly, now.

Running time: 57minutes, no interval.
Warnings: Violence, bad language, sexual themes.