In an age when certainty feels scarce and division can fracture even the closest families, After the Flood arrives not with easy answers, but with something more enduring: the possibility that love can survive loss. Toorak Times attended the special media preview earlier this week and found a new Australian musical that turns an ancient story of catastrophe into a deeply contemporary call for connection.
Created by Melbourne composer and theatre-maker Ari Jacob, with a book by Jacob and Josh Gurgiel, After the Flood reimagines Noah and the Flood through the lives of a modern Melbourne Jewish family. Rather than beginning with an ark already afloat, the musical begins around a Shabbat table, where generations of history, argument, affection and unresolved hurt sit side by side.
When Noah, played by Simon Starr, announces his vision of an approaching catastrophe, his family dismisses it as fantasy. But as rain begins and an ark takes shape, the flood becomes more than a physical threat: it forces each family member to confront the beliefs, resentments and inherited burdens that have quietly pulled them apart.
At the heart of the production is Naama, portrayed with warmth and authority by acclaimed singer-songwriter Deborah Conway. Alongside Starr’s Noah, the cast includes Michelle Swersky, Eli Faraday and Amira Cherie as the couple’s adult children, each grappling with identity, faith, love and an uncertain future.
The show’s emotional power lies in its refusal to treat family conflict as a problem to be solved quickly. Instead, it asks a more difficult question: what do we owe the people we love when the world we understood disappears?
Jacob’s original score, performed live by a ten-piece band, gives the production its pulse. Traditional oud and kamancheh, played by two Iranian musicians Jacob connected with during the recent war, bring sounds from across the region into a distinctly Australian Jewish theatrical language.
The result is music that feels both ancient and immediate: a soundscape of mourning, resistance and fragile hope. Under musical director Adam Starr, the ensemble gives the story a living, communal energy rather than treating the biblical material as distant mythology.
Directed by Rebecca Skovron, with movement direction by Yakira Abraham, After the Flood is ultimately not a story about destruction. It is a story about what remains after destruction, and what people can choose to rebuild together.
Conway has described the opportunity to explore these themes as “a sweet, idyllic calm in amongst the tempestuous times,” a sentiment that captures the production’s central promise: even amid grief, there may be a rainbow waiting beyond the storm.
At a time when Jewish artists are navigating an increasingly difficult cultural landscape, After the Flood stands as an act of creative resilience. It is Jewish storytelling made by Jewish artists, for a contemporary Melbourne audience, on a major local stage.
The strictly limited season runs for six performances from 4–9 November 2026, with venue details provided to ticket holders 24 hours before each performance.
For anyone searching for theatre that acknowledges the weight of loss without surrendering to it, After the Flood offers a moving answer: we cannot always save the world we knew, but we can still choose who we carry through the water.
