First, Do No Harm

Anna Sokolova
Jul 1
3 min read

KXT on Broadway 24 June - 4 July 2026, Sydney

The review

It is an unapologetic, direct speaking story, posing questions boldly so there is no way to hide from facing them. Two hours of challenge, does one want it or not. There is no judgement, no merciful clues given. It is left raw and open.

Everyone here holds their own solid ground - grown, justified, hard-fought. And now those grounds clash. Trying to pick sides hardly works - a counterpart holds cards which turn the win, if there is one.

Monumental questions about health and human ethics, blurred border between mental and medical conditions, consequences of decisions and responsibility for someone, ultimately, life are the core of this play, wrapped into a story of a family which would be sweetly normal, if not for the terrifying choice life posed to them.

Alex (excellent @joshie_merten): in the very first scene with his parents, he gives off a sense that something is going to go wrong. Very wrong. That gut feeling when something very subtle is off-sync, but consciousness is too slow to register it. He is great looking, sporty. He has a father, Robert (Richard Hilliar), a former Olympic swimmer, who adores him - a double sword affection, he pours himself into his son. Richard Hilliar, who has a great wealth of loud emotions, here is a man who wins with softness and low voice. Exploding when pushed into a corner, he shows strength to pull himself instantly together is a creature of a firm shape and believes. He has defined, set it up and now holds his space for forever.

Alex’s mum, Melissa (@kate.booka), is a surgeon campaigning for the head position in the Australian Medical Association. Grounded, practical, and ambitious, this woman even loves as a cool-headed surgeon - through a broken heart and pain of resistance, she swiftly turns to acceptance and a deep search for workable solutions. She lives her passion for work, which constantly causes cracks in her relationship at home. Once love and peace were restored with gentle talks and care over dinner, but next it fractures with sharp and quick not arguments but more like sparring. It is not a trivial family argument; it is a constant balancing on the edge of equilibrium between long-term hold sacrifices, adjustments, and going deeper - maybe regrets.

Ian Marney (@shanreetan), Melissa’s opponent for the presidency, and an excellent orthopedic surgeon, in a small entangled world, becomes, unwillingly, a faith-deciding figure.

Dr Marney is a voice of medical logic; he is taking the side of a patient’s argument, bringing a fight for a mentally healthy (according to psychiatric assessments) person, old enough to make an independent decision, for the Ethical Authority, an old-school man, with a pinch of savory medical humor (Barry French), and ultimately parents, too. Shan-Ree Tan builds his character deep, but does not disclose much on the surface. Sarcastic, solid in opinions, filtering his remarks so that they just stay at the edge of appropriate, he knows his own value, he is both feet on the ground, and with that, he is a smart, open-minded tactician.

This play brings up a conversation about an emotionally excruciating condition which hardly anyone has heard of before, which is a terra incognita for any ground - personal, social, or medical. At the beginning, it made one guess what the conversation was about, but it turned out to be wrong. The question “who is entitled to control one’s own body” yet again poses with its original painful nakedness.

The play is a ball of wrenching emotions; it evokes waves of clairvoyance, which have constantly proven to be true - thank you to the atmosphere created with lights and music. The only moment that overpaced the play is the culminating scene in darkness, where one needs a moment to comprehend what just happened, but the story moves on.

It is scattered with fine humorous moments, but it is anchored heavily in the pain of desperate attempts to break through what burns inside, and what is fenced off from the outer. Cruelty for the sake of saving, destruction as a way to survive - the contradictions brought up by this work and performed par excellence are tormenting, but brave, relevant, and urgent.

Believing the moral and ethical code is still valued by humanity, we certainly need to be brazen.