The Performance

Quietly transformational
The Times

A tour de force... I cant recommend this too highly
Patrick Gale

Innovative... an original, at-a-sitting read
Daily Mail

A potent meditation on the intensity of womens lives
Charlotte Wood, author of The Weekend

A miracle... Engaging and evocative
Washington Post

I loved and admired The Performance... Unmissable
Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters

Lively and intimate... The way Thomas plays with the reader is a sort of genius
Guardian

Thomas writes these women with such wisdom and compassion, that by the end we are all transformed
Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold.
The house lights lower.
The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness.

As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play.
Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone.
As the performance unfolds, so does each womans story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage.