How The Almighty Sometimes is opening up conversations about mental health

Posted on 3 November, 2025

Loving. Powerful. Human. That’s what audiences can expect from Kendall Feaver’s The Almighty Sometimes.

Coming to the stage of The Q this November thanks to Off the Ledge Theatre – a local independent theatre company founded in March 2025 by Lachlan Houen – the new production has quickly made a name for itself as an acclaimed ode to mental wellbeing in modern society.

Following Anna, a young woman who was diagnosed with a severe mental illness as a child and prescribed a cocktail of pills to deal with it, The Almighty Sometimes explores the link between medication and identity.

Bringing the audience along as Anna begins to question who she is without her pills and a future without them, lead actor Winsome Ogilvie says the play offers a deeply human experience.

“It is a play with so many questions, but it doesn’t aim to answer any of them, because mental illness is a thing that as a society, we are struggling to wrap our heads around,” she says.

“This play opens conversations about mental health in such a human manner. Most of the play is conversations that Anna has with her mother, her boyfriend and her psychiatrist.”

Audiences are dropped into the middle of Anna’s life when she turns 18, seven years after she starts taking medication, when she discovers stories she wrote in her childhood.

Realising that she wants to pursue a career as a writer, Anna makes the decision to stop taking her medication to discover what she could be without it. From there, the play follows the unravelling of her life. Moving past being medicated is not easy, especially with her mother feeling compelled to intervene, threatening the fragile balance they have both fought so hard to maintain.

“Anna struggles a lot with what this medication has done to her and from her point of view, it’s as though it’s taken away a part of her that she doesn’t know. It’s taken away a part of her personality that she maybe never encountered, or she feels as though a part of her childhood has been lost because of this medication,” explains Winsome.

Diving into the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, along with the perils of growing up, and the ethics of the mental health profession, it’s no wonder that The Almighty Sometimes is known as one of the prolific and nuanced plays about mental health in the contemporary canon.

“It’s such a funny show and the humour makes it a very well-rounded, human experience. It’s not all doom and gloom, it’s not a harrowing story about mental illness,” says Winsome.

“It’s full of quite heavy conversations but in between these funny quips and that morbid humour that comes out of a dark situation…there’s so many heartwarming parts about the show as well.”

The winner of the Judges’ Award in the prestigious Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting (UK) and the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Prizes for Drama, Lachlan says that there was no better choice than to debut the company on the stage than with The Almighty Sometimes.

“Kendall’s play examines one of the biggest social issues of our times, yet somehow never once loses sight of how achingly human the story of mental illness is, at its core,” he explains.

“Kendall doesn’t take sides or blame anyone for these issues – she simply paints a tender and relatable portrait of mental health struggles and says ‘these are the issues of our times, let’s talk.’ It also just happens to have some of the most biting humour I’ve ever read in a play!”

Featuring a diverse mix of established and emerging Canberran creatives and running for a strictly limited season of six performances from Wednesday 19 until Saturday 22 November, Winsome says that anyone who watches The Almighty Sometimes will leave the performance feeling grounded and full of gratitude.

And with a deeply human core, it’s a nice reminder to celebrate the small, meaningful moments that make up our lives.

“It’s not grandiose, it’s not a sweeping epic. It’s just about the moments in our lives, those little sometimes we have,” she says,

“I hope people will finish the play and want to ring their mum.”

Photography: Photox.