Nailed

"There are things that won't be stopped. 

This baby wants to be born."

Australia.  1959.  Teenagers, Joe and May, are on the run from the Aboriginal mission where May has grown up. With May close to giving birth, they take refuge in a stables owned by a childless couple on the run from each other.  As the rooster crows, all grapple for the thing that will make them whole.  Will the angels intervene to protect the one they love?

Nailed is a play about family and love and the things we do out of desperation, a bittersweet love story and a tragedy about damaged people limping towards salvation.  It is a story about Faith: when it delivers us and when it fails us.

LENGTH

120 minutes

CAST

2 Females, 2 Males)

REVIEWS

“Caleb Lewis is a young Australian writer and this premiere, I’m convinced, marks the appearance of a significant new talent.  Lewis brilliantly commands the twists and shocks he unleashes.”

Colin Rose, The Sun Herald

“Feisty, feverish, passionate and powerful…  With echoes of Nick Enright and Andrew Bovell, the writing is beautifully evocative and poetic.”                

Bryce Hallet, Sydney Morning Herald

“At a time when potent theatre that really grabs its viewers by the throat seems thin on the ground, Nailed is all the more a standout.  Lewis has crafted an at times highly visceral, often unsettling, but always utterly human, love story…  It’s one of those precious times in theatre where everything works and we merge with the very pulse of this drama.”               

Brag

“Nailed is magnificent and moving. Cleverly forming a bricolage of borrowings from legend and marrying this with the recent and largely unexplored territories of indigenous experience, Lewis's world is our world, his characters entirely three dimensional and frighteningly reckless. The events are equal parts mystical and psychological, and the overall effect is enthralling.”                                                                                                 

FBI Radio

“Caleb Lewis has carved the rarest of jewels – a potent and poetic Australian tragedy.  This is a muscular, yet tender story of family, faith and, finally, miraculous love.  It’s a story of staggering theatrical power.”           

David Bertold, Artistic Director, Griffin Theatre Co.

CAST

2 Female, 2 Male

LENGTH

110 minutes

purchase

Available for purchase at  https://australianplays.org/script/ASC-934