With the kind of elegance and menace that feels both timeless and startlingly new, Sydney Theatre Company’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is a shimmering, seductive plunge into moral ambiguity that grips from the first moment and never loosens its hold.
Joanna Murray-Smith’s adaptation is a masterstroke of psychological precision and theatrical flair. She distils Patricia Highsmith’s iconic thriller into a taut, chamber piece that hums with tension.
Witty, icy, and devastatingly perceptive, the script captures Ripley’s magnetic complexity while carving out a sharply contemporary resonance, the hunger to reinvent oneself, to be seen, admired, envied, and obeyed.
Sarah Goodes directs with unwavering confidence. Her staging is fluid and unsettling – smooth, irresistible, and faintly dangerous. Goodes understands that the true horror here lies not in violence but in seduction, in the seductive idea that morality is simply another costume one may choose not to wear.
As Tom Ripley, Will McDonald delivers a career-defining performance. His Ripley is not a monster in waiting, but a boy desperate for love and legitimacy – until rejection curdles into ambition, and ambition into something darker and dazzling.
McDonald’s transformation is subtle and hypnotic; he slips in and out of personas with the effortless charm of a practiced liar, leaving the audience complicit, enthralled, and unnerved.
Roman Delo’s Dickie Greenleaf is the perfect foil – golden, careless, achingly enviable, while Claude Scott-Mitchell brings both warmth and razor intelligence to Marge Sherwood, refusing to play her as a naïf but rather a woman who sees more than others wish she would.
Andrew McFarlane provides gravitas and emotional weight as the patrician Herbert Greenleaf, and Faisal Hamza is wickedly sharp as Freddie Miles, the one man who looks too closely for his own good. Johnny Nasser’s Inspector Rolverini adds a delicious undercurrent of dread, circling Ripley with cool suspicion.
Visually, the production is ravishing. Elizabeth Gadsby’s set evokes both mid-century glamour and existential void – sun-splashed terraces that seem to float on danger, cramped rooms that trap breath and secrets.
Emma White’s costumes are exquisite: a mix of crisp linens and tailored elegance. Damien Cooper’s lighting sculpts bodies and shadows into psychological landscapes, while Steve Francis’s sound design thrums with unease, a heartbeat of longing and dread beneath every scene.
For seventy years, Tom Ripley has fascinated us, but here he feels frighteningly close – not a relic of noir, but a mirror held up to ambition in an age obsessed with identity and transformation. Elegant, chilling and darkly intoxicating, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a masterwork of storytelling and stagecraft, that leaves you breathless, uneasy and hungry for more.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Playhouse – Arts Centre Melbourne, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
Performance: Friday 31 October 2025
Season continues to 23 November 2025
Information and Bookings: www.artscentremelbourne.com.au
Images: Will McDonald as Tom Ripley – photo by Prudence Upton | Roman Delo as Dickie Greenleaf and Will McDonald as Tom Ripley – photo by Cameron Grant | Claude Scott-Mitchell as Marge Sherwood and Roman Delo as Dickie Greenleaf – photo by Cameron Grant | The Cast of The Talented Mr. Ripley – photo by Prudence Upton
Review: Rohan Shearn