Tragic figure or traitor? New show looks at life of Bennelong

With Bennelong in London, Jane Harrison brings the Wangal man to life Sat 8 Aug 2026 at 4:30am In a London townhouse in 1793, Wangal man Woollarawarre Bennelong sang the first ever Aboriginal song to be performed on English soil. Some have labelled Bennelong a tragic figure and a traitor to his people, while others have called him a diplomat and an adventurer. It's these contradictions in Bennelong's character and legacy that intrigue award-winning playwright and Muruwari woman Jane Harrison (Stolen, Rainbow's End). While researching for The Visitors (2020), a play about early contact told from the perspective of Aboriginal people, Harrison kept encountering stories of Bennelong. "Bennelong just jumped out as this amazing character," she tells ABC Radio National's Awaye!. "He was basically kidnapped and chained up by Governor [Arthur] Phillip and then learned [English] really quickly and became the go-between between his people and the settlers or the colonisers as they are." More than a mere interlocutor, Bennelong elected to travel to England with Phillip, hoping to educate British people about his kin. Bennelong ultimately rejected the colony and everything connected to it when he returned home almost three years later, living the remainder of his life in a small community on the Parramatta River. "I just thought it was a fascinating story in response to colonisation," Harrison explains. Now Bennelong's life and legacy — and in particular his trip to Europe — have become the basis for Harrison's latest work Bennelong in London, on now at Sydney Theatre Company (STC). Playing with history In Bennelong in London, Sebastian (Guy Simon; The Visitors) is an actor living in Sydney who is preparing to audition to star as Bennelong in a one-man show. But filming his audition tape isn't easy. He inadvertently summons the spirit of Bennelong (Googoorewon Knox; Big Name, No Blankets) to help him better understand the character. Setting Bennelong in London in the present, with Bennelong retelling his story to Sebastian, means the play never feels like a history lesson. As Sebastian and Bennelong talk they don't just unearth the truths and tensions of Bennelong's legacy, they tease out contemporary ideas of Blak cultural and artistic expression. "It's a play, so it's playful," Harrison says. "I certainly haven't avoided some of the harder aspects of history, things like the fact that he did like a drink. But I do it through the lens of the modern-day character interrogating him about his experience. "Hopefully it's an interesting way to tell this story that has resonance now in terms of Aboriginal urban lives in the colony and how we live good cultural lives." Harrison is the first to admit she isn't a historian, and her knowledge of Bennelong was initially surface level. In order to gain a sense of his character she delved into biographies and academic articles. Then, in 2024, Harrison undertook a residency in Rome where she spent a month writing the first draft of the play. "I'd never lived overseas so I had the experience of being in a foreign country without language and I felt it was mirroring what Bennelong would have experienced," she says. Despite her research and her fresh insight into being Blak abroad, Harrison says it was still a challenge to develop Bennelong's character. "You have to imagine what it was like from his point of view," she says. "That is a tricky thing to do, to flesh out a full three-dimensional person from what has been recorded by the white eye." To counteract "the white eye" of colonial records Harrison looked to the Aboriginal men in her own life for inspiration for her imagined version of Bennelong. "Of course I don't know for sure, but I feel like Bennelong chose to find out as much as he could about the colony in order to better his own people," Harrison says. "[The colonisers] had been there for two years before they kidnapped [Bennelong] so they were sort of embedded, but he wanted to find out as much as he could to be able to inform his own people. I think in that way, he's quite a noble person and an interesting person." 'More than just a simple man' Bennelong in London isn't the first time the Wangal leader's story has been brought to life on stage. In 2017 Bangarra Dance Theatre premiered then-artistic director and Nunukul/Munaldjali man Stephen Page's full-length choreographic work Bennelong. Wiradjuri/Gamilaraay man Beau Dean Riley Smith (The Visitors) won a Helpmann Award for Best Male Dancer for his performance in the titular role. Just five years earlier I Am Eora premiered at Sydney Festival directed by Quandamooka/Nunukul man Wesley Enoch (The Sunshine Club, The Visitors) and written by Wiradjuri woman Anita Heiss (Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, The Paradise Pact). It was this multidisciplinary performance centred on Bennelong, Barangaroo, and resistance warrior Pemulwuy that first introduced Knox to Bennelong's story. "My brother and dad were in the band for I Am Eora," Knox explains. The Arrernte, Gamilaroi and Bigambul actor remembers looking up at the stage and being struck by the show's ability to take the legacy of someone who had previously felt "wishy-washy" and reveal something "beautiful" and "complex". "[The real] Bennelong wasn't simple. He might have been opportunistic, but he wasn't a fool," Knox says. That's demonstrated by Bennelong being able to travel to London as an honoured guest in a time when Australia's first Catholic Archbishop wrote he "heard a man, educated … maintain that there was no more harm in shooting a native, than in shooting a wild dog". "It takes more than just a simple person to get there," Knox says. Bennelong's cleverness is one of the first things Knox thought about when preparing to play Bennelong. He also considered the similarities between himself and Bennelong, and whether he wanted to lean into or away from their differences. "Weirdly enough, a lot of this is what the actor in the play is dealing with, the idea of my morals versus Bennelong morals, because the times are different". Knox credits Harrison's nuanced writing for helping him navigate his way into the role. As he read and reread the script, Knox started to realise moments he'd initially thought tangential had been seeded pages earlier. The actors then are asked to keep ideas alive even when the scene seems to have moved on. "There's a lot of layers in there," Knox says. Keeping Bennelong's spirit alive After returning from England, Bennelong maintained his "European" ways — including dining with government officials on occasion — for a short time before ultimately returning to traditional life among the Wallumedegal and becoming a respected Elder. Likewise the colony turned its back on Bennelong, with a Sydney Gazette obituary describing him as "a thorough savage, not to be warped from the form and character that nature gave him by all the efforts that mankind could use". In staging Bennelong in London at STC's Wharf Theatre, not far from where Bennelong lived much of his life, and from the outcrop that bears his name the centuries-old story becomes all the more vivid. "Australia is such a big country now," Harrison says. "There's people from all over the world living here, but we need to know the roots of this country." Knox sees it as an opportunity to pick up "the rug everyone has swept things under" to reveal a truer, more complete version of history. "All I can come back to is that society ain't built for Blackfullas, and we've got to navigate it," he says. "We've had to navigate it, and each generation we take what our parents have given us, and grab that and carry on with that." When Harrison reflects on the idea of Bennelong's spirit visiting her, it provides an insight to her own creative practice "I remember Aboriginal psychologist Dr Tracy Westerman talking about visitation after someone has died," Harrison says. "And I haven't experienced it personally myself, but it is a very cultural thing to happen. "How would I react? I'd probably be scared out of my skin, but I probably have some questions and that's what the actor has: lots of questions." Bennelong in London is at Wharf 1 Theatre, Sydney, until August 19.