With her trademark intelligence and emotional precision, Murray-Smith crafts a play that is both deeply intimate and universally resonant. Three Little Words is a compelling two hander that asks who owns a love story, and what happens when the version you have lived by is challenged. Unsettling and darkly humorous, it is a riveting examination of desire, loyalty and the cost of believing in a beautiful lie.

Set in the small town in outback Queensland in the 1960s, Philip Dean’s musical comedy, of two deserted women, Vickie and Rae, both of whom have a passion for singing Country and Western classics, will start your boot scootin’ feet tapping and your heart singing along with Hank Williams and Patsy Kline.  Though very different in background and temperament, the conforming Catholic housewife and the brash, lusty and hard-living barmaid, form a bond.

First produced in Brisbane’s La Boite theatre in 1995, this witty, wild musical is set against the wider Australian landscape in a time of feminism, contraception, reds under the bed, conscription and the Vietnam War.  It is very funny and very poignant.  At “the heart of the story is loneliness, driven by the very primal fear of abandonment”. Come to Ad Astra’s black box production of Long Gone Lonesome Cowgirls: let the emotional depth of the music surprise you and these “crazy for being so lonely” women delight you.