Rebels at Melbourne Theatre Company tickets

It’s late January, 1985. The Prime Minister wants to rebuild Australian cricket from the ground up. Packer, Australia’s richest man who already revolutionised the sport through World Series Cricket, has his own leverage and his own agenda. They need Lloyd, now retired and one of the most successful captains the game has ever seen, to make it happen. An absorbing afternoon unfolds, setting in motion events that would go on to change Australian sport and world politics forever.

Playwright Julian Larnach, who adapted Favel Parrett’s novel Past the Shallows for the stage to widespread acclaim, fashions an unmistakably Australian work of historical fiction – larger-than-life personalities, power struggles and big money – into a fast-moving three-hander that imagines what was really said in that room. Beneath the witty banter and the bravado, what's at stake is more than just cricket; it’s what a nation stands for.

Jessica Arthur (The Shiralee, The Dictionary of Lost Words) directs this sharp and intelligent take on what might have happened behind closed doors.