Draw Two
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Date Reviewed: 18/09/2025
Draw Two opens in a hush. The lights rise gently, revealing Riley (Georgia McGinness) standing alone, as a soft, repetitive beep echoes through the air.
Are we in a hospital? A kitchen, perhaps? A supermarket?
This subtle ambiguity sets the tone for a story where memory and reality gently dance, quietly overlapping and softly blurring.
In the fifteen-items-or-less aisle, we soon learn Riley is picking up a few last-minute things before returning to Melbourne. Waiting in the car is Lucas, her recently orphaned nephew.
Then, a stranger appears—mistaking Riley for her not-so-identical but recently deceased twin sister, Mia. This brief case of mistaken identity becomes the doorway through which the play explores themes of self, memory, grief.
Rather than correct the stranger, Riley steps into Mia’s identity—a choice that unfolds into something much more complicated. Georgia McGinness inhabits this duality masterfully, slipping between personas over the next 90 minutes with remarkable ease and emotional precision.
Her performance is quietly captivating. The audience’s stillness spoke volumes - eyes locked, breath held. McGinness’s expressive gaze and fluid shifts in tone and pitch brought entire personalities and relationships to life, with an air that suggested we had all known someone like Riley, most definitely it seemed we all had met her Mother.
In Riley’s childhood home, she is surrounded by memories - some tender, others confronting. This emotional texture is mirrored beautifully in Ishan Vivekanantham’s minimalist staging. The world is wrapped in brown paper, floor to ceiling—a visual metaphor for transience, fragility, and a life in flux.
Clare Hennessy’s sound design, subtle and restrained, gently underscores the play’s dreamlike quality, becoming more present as Riley’s journey deepens.
Lauren Goodfellow’s animated projections add warmth, character, and flashes of humour—an elegant layering of technical elements that enrich the emotional narrative without ever overwhelming it.
Draw Two doesn’t resort to melodrama. It trusts the audience to sit with discomfort, to recognise the complexity of Riley’s grief, her tangled relationships, and the weight of unexpected responsibility. The storytelling is honest, careful, and emotionally resonant.
At its core is McGinness’s magnetic solo performance - she moves with quiet intensity through nostalgia, tenderness, and heartbreak, offering a portrayal of loss that is raw, deeply felt, and refreshingly unsentimental.
Draw Two is a haunting meditation on family, identity, and purpose. Within the ache of Riley’s remorse, we find moments of grace and resilience; her burgeoning bond with Lucas, a fragile but vital thread.
This show is about the acceptance of loss and also of love, growth, and the beauty that can emerge through sorrow.
Reviewed by Vivien Lynch