Bearing Witness: A Gumtree on Summer Road

Four boys, an old gumtree, and a country town that drives each one to their breaking point.

A Gumtree on Summer Road, written and directed by Lily Cox and starring Jake Davies, Marley Dunn, Evan Graham and Richard Lavroff, returns to Sydney Fringe 2026 at Qtopia's Loading Dock Theatre after debuting at Newcastle Fringe in March. Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with real boys and men across regional and rural Australia, it is a stark, deeply emotive picture of small-town masculinity — a play, Hope Pratt writes, that is meant to be witnessed and reflected upon.

Reviewed by Hope Pratt.

Four boys, an old gumtree, and a country town that drives each one to their breaking point. A Gumtree on Summer Road, written and directed by Lily Cox and starring Jake Davies, Marley Dunn, Evan Graham, and Richard Lavroff, first debuted at the Newcastle Fringe Festival in March 2026. Now it has made its return for the Sydney Fringe Festival at Qtopia's Loading Dock Theatre.

In the small auditorium of the Loading Dock, the stump of a gumtree sits at the front of the stage. Spotlit, it's close enough that if I were to sit in the front row, I would be able to reach out and touch it. It's polished, shimmers in the white light of the stage in a way that is both familiar and foreboding. Before the show starts, a disclaimer is given.

“These are the boys of country Australia.”

It's much the same as the one Cox gave me when we sat down in Prince Alfred's park for an interview. She explained to me then, as Jake Davies does to the audience now, that while the four boys of A Gumtree on Summer Road are fictional, their stories came from hundreds of hours of interviews she did with real boys and men across regional and rural Australia.

Struck by the trickle down effects of a drought on her hometown near the Hunter Valley, Cox wanted to write and direct a play about that experience and how it impacted her community. What came of that is a deeply emotive and stark picture of small town Australia, that at its core, is meant to be witnessed and reflected upon.

Vignettes across time

The story itself unfolds as a series of vignettes that are stitched together across time, moving between a patchwork of adolescence and early adulthood. It begins with them as children. The play starts with them as children. They crowd around the tree stump, climbing over one another and speaking too loudly in the way kids do. The stage is lit in bright warm light that feels like summer sunshine. Their lives seem uncomplicated, more carefree.

The innocence of the scene is quickly shattered by a bush fire. Eskies are flung from the left wing of the stage to be used to battle the fire. Flames crackle, an orange-red light engulfs the stage, and the boys end up in cough fits, yelling hoarsely to one another, throwing each other about to better douse the blaze. From there, the levity of the opening scene never returns.

We jump from tragedy to tragedy, all compounding on one another into a weight that breaks the boys one by one. Boy 1 (Evan Graham) is a farmer's son who lost his dad young, leaving him to care for the family farm on his own in the midst of drought. As the drought worsens, he's forced to fire his farmhand, he has to shoot his cattle, he misses his father and has no way of coping with this kind of responsibility. When he finally does lose the farm, he can't bear it. There's only so much “she'll be righting” his mates can do, it's gone and he believes it's his fault. He takes his life at the gumtree.

Boy 2 (Marley Dunn) is the quietest of the group and studying in the city. His homelife however is fraught with addiction and abuse. His brother, played by Graham, has been more of a parental figure than a sibling but ends up incarcerated after a night of partying leads to the overdose of a friend. Boy 2's grades start to slip, his relationship with his family deteriorates and the loss of his friend weighs on him. When he tries to explain why he's failed a unit, his brother rips into him rather than encouraging him. It's his breaking point and he goes to the gumtree.

Boy 3 (Richard Lavroff) is a closeted sports star. His father hates any femininity he portrays and never acted to protect his son from the sexual abuse he endures from his uncle. These are parts of the reason Boy 3 joins his footy team, that and a boy named Jack. Jack, portrayed by Jake Davies, orbits around Boy 3 with playful pushes and a more-than-friendly arm slung over his shoulders. When they do share a kiss, Jack pushes him away, despite him initiating the moment. This leads to Boy 3's isolation. He doesn't get invited out to drinks with the boys; Jack threatens to out him if he mentions the kiss to anyone. In the end, Boy 3 finds his way to the gumtree as well.

The last boy, Boy 4 (Jake Davies), is an outsider. He's tall and awkward, laughing at the wrong times and remains disjointedly connected to the rest of the ensemble in ways that are unclear at moments. He seems to be friends with the core group of boys but also struggles socially and later is invited to a party as a joke. The only solid relationship he has is with his mother — Lavroff takes on the role — who is kind and loving, but overbearing at times. The bullying from his peers becomes too much and in the final emotional outpour between him and his mother, one where it almost seems like he'll make it out the other side, he too ends up at the gumtree.

Archetypes of the bush

These stories are braided into one another in a way that oscillates between adolescence and early adulthood. But knowing what is happening and when, is only clarified through inference, rather than any clear marker for a shift in time. This is made more confusing by the lack of names or costume changes.

The sets move, the eskies double bar benches, buckets, and grave caskets, but the boys never really shift in appearance. They are only ever identifiable by their costumes. Boy 1 wears a flannel and dusty jeans, Boy 2 a long sleeve shirt with a backwards cap. Boy 3 is permanently in his sports kit, while Boy 4 remains in a colourful knit Cosby sweater for the duration of the performance.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but in not giving them names, in not making changes as times moves, they become archetypes. The farmer's son. The outsider. The closeted footballer. The hometown hopeful. In a way they all relate back to Australiana folk heroes, like the larrikin or battler, each becoming a new kind of shorthand for a new kind of Australian bush story. The result of this is poignant and seems to say: look at these boys, you know these boys, help them.

This point is further driven home when each boy commits suicide. They are harrowing and raw performances and just abstracted enough to be impactful without being insensitive. One by one, in different patches of time each boy suffers the same fate. They stand on the stump. The stage goes dark, the spotlight hits them, and then they scream. They scream and tug at their shirt, their hair, hyperventilating, hitting themselves, then they stop and the light goes out.

“If only someone had listened. If only someone had asked. If only they had said something. If only we were kinder to those who are different. If only, if only, if only.”

As I watch them, I think back to what led them to the gumtree and how preventable each one was. They are shrouded in a thick blanket of ‘if onlys.'

While the cast deliver powerfully emotive performances, the story is kept at such a fever pitch the entire time, that there are few moments that let the audience breathe. With the muddled timelines and compounding extra characters — Jack, the mother, the brother — it is at times hard to parse out key events and themes as cleanly as I would have liked. The unfortunate outcome of this is a more tangled ethos and a less clear path forward after witnessing such preventable tragedies. Some silent moments, some detangled time-shifts, would have benefited the story.

The hope of rain

Still, A Gumtree on Summer Road succeeds in what it sets out to do: it gives us an opportunity to witness, to listen, and then hopefully go forward into our lives with a new understanding of Australian masculinity. This is best demonstrated in the final scene. After all the suffering we have just witnessed, we move back in time one last time.

The boys are at the pub when the drought breaks. The stage is dimly lit and cleared of its props, while the boys are gathered at the back deciding who wants what drink. Then they hear it, the rain. It starts out slow and slowly building into a torrent. Immediately, the boys are leaping in the air, jumping with jubilation as they holler and whoop. When they calm down, they throw their arms around one another and watch the rain fall as they sing an old Aussie song, one I don't know, but one that I know means something to them. That is the note we are left on. The hope of rain, the hope of mateship. The hope that someone, somewhere will reach out.

A Gumtree on Summer Road — written and directed by Lily Cox, performed by Jake Davies, Marley Dunn, Evan Graham and Richard Lavroff. Qtopia's Loading Dock Theatre, Sydney Fringe 2026.

Writer & Director: Lily Cox
Cast: Jake Davies, Marley Dunn, Evan Graham, Richard Lavroff
Venue: Qtopia Loading Dock Theatre, Sydney Fringe 2026
Event listing: sydneyfringe.com/events/a-gum-tree-on-summer-road
Production photos: Nina Shchegoleva & Hope Pratt

Reviewed by Hope Pratt.