Under the eagle eye of a portrait of Queen Victoria in late 19th-century Sydney, Governor Mountgarret (Peter Holland), accompanied by his wife Helena (Antonia Kitzel) and twin children Lara (Caitlin Baker) and Gerald (Robbie Haltiner), has arrived to take up office. His uniform is heavy with gold braid, his rooms are full of the right furniture and he and his family evoke Victorian-era photographs of respectable British officialdom.

The dominant image on Andrew Kay's versatile set is a giant reproduction of a brooding European view from the 1820s by one Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Boyot across what later became known as Circular Quay. The buildings are as yet few, but there's already a heavy fence and an iron gate across The Rocks. Mountgarret's Sydney bids fair to be an even more oppressive place.

There are some young men on trial and found guilty for the rape of an Indigenous woman, the young Frances Pod (Kiara Tomkins). She is taken into the Governor's house as a servant, while he is deciding whether to have the rapists executed or to grant them mercy.

But Mountgarret and family have secrets and eccentricities. He has been to Sydney before; what is his relationship to Frances Pod? His last posting did not end well. His wife is applying laudanum to all problems including their poetically inclined and not very practical son. His daughter wears male dress, has strong feminist and egalitarian opinions and is attempting to carve out untraditional pathways. She goes looking for socially meaningful work with a soup kitchen and with the Irish journalist and printer Tammey Lee Mackenzie (Jack Casey).

Suffice it to say that Beatrix Christian's play provides more shocks along the way and things end less than well.

The script does not always succeed in doing all it sets out to and isn't always confident in style. Sometimes it feels like black comedy, sometimes social realism. But the issues of power, gender and the colonists' relationships with the Indigenous remain deeply important ones and there is an increasingly brooding atmosphere. And under Tony Llewellyn-Jones' experienced direction the cast come up with clear portrayals.

The authority of Holland's Governor Mountgarret crumbles convincingly from an initial appearance of strength. Kitzel has great presence as the self-absorbed and somewhat isolated Helena. Baker as the forthright Lara is a powerful voice written somewhat in the manner of George Bernard Shaw's heroines, always ready to talk about social wrongs. She is a match for Casey's stalwart Irish newspaper man, who is more pragmatic but likewise full of what could be considered revolution.

Haltiner has less to do perhaps as the more passive (but still progressively minded) Gerald, but the role blossoms as he becomes more aware than the others of the nature and beauty of the land in which they find themselves. His relationship with Tomkins' perceptive Frances Pod is sensitively done. Tomkins' performance has great confidence in the character's integrity and reinforces the sense of the land and its people having possibilities to which the European characters are blind.

Along with Kay's set, Anna Senior's period costumes feel right for the times and the mood. Chris Ellyard's lighting design is properly understated but capable of dramatic effects where needed. Neville Pye's soundscape is full of birdsong and a subtle but vital part of the atmosphere of the play.

The Governor's Family never quite topples over into melodrama. It may have dated somewhat since its first performances in the 1990s but it is still talking about matters that need addressing. As a Gothic and sometimes surreal piece with some successful digging at the terrors and tensions of white settlement, it could very well be worth a visit.