Revival of Clifford Odets’s Anti-Fascist Play at Melbourne’s Fringe Festival

Mark Wilson and Katie Sfetkidis are staging Clifford Odets’s 1936 agitprop drama Till the Day I Die in the car park of the Trades Hall building during this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. The production will be performed on a truck, echoing the clandestine staging that followed the play’s original ban in 1930s Australia. A professional cast of nearly 30 actors will rehearse on weekends to accommodate day-jobs.

The Guardian

First produced by Sydney’s New Theatre—a 1930s network of companies aligned with communism—the play dramatizes a communist Berliner arrested by the Nazis for distributing left-wing pamphlets. Its initial ban was intended to suppress anti-fascist messaging, but the prohibition sparked public outcry and a secret performance on a truck at Collingwood Town Hall. The original controversy contributed to the work’s long-term obscurity.

The Guardian

Wilson, who recently directed *The Glass Menagerie* for Melbourne Theatre Company, views Odets as a precursor to playwrights such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Sfetkidis, motivated by the play’s historical resonance, emphasizes the relevance of its themes to contemporary anxieties about political discourse.

The Guardian

Wilson explains that the revival seeks to “rekindle its activist intent,” positioning the production as a response to a perceived decline in overtly political theatre. He stresses that the play’s relevance lies in its exploration of the personal cost of political commitment and its anti-Nazi stance. Sfetkidis adds that the work’s “long and ongoing” nature reflects a broader fight against fascism that extends beyond any single generation.

The Guardian

• “We got excited by these artists refusing to be banned, about the idea of a necessary theatre,” — Mark Wilson

The Guardian

• “The work is long and the work is ongoing, and fighting against the forces of fascism is going to be much larger than anybody’s lifetime,” — Mark Wilson

The Guardian