The First Nations capacity for passing stories through the generations is unsurpassed. I’ve just been to Budj Bim – no longer Mt Eccles! – and the Gunditjmarra are still telling 37,000m year old histories of its volcanic eruption. But it is just possible that some of those accounts get a little warped as they pass from mouth to mouth over the years.

So Gumbainggirr/Wiradjuri woman, Dalara Williams’s Big Girls Don’t Cry is offering a warm picture of Redfern life in 1965 amidst a much broader snapshot of the politics of those pre-(successful) Referendum times – the Vietnam War, the Freedom Rides to Walgett, etc, the Wave Hill walk-off and the naked racism which could allow white authority figures – whether the cops or bosses at the Mish – to call an Aboriginal man, “Boy”, or refer to “Gins and no-good Boongs”. But I was particularly intrigued by the addition of the word “nomads” to the list of insults quoted by the most political figure in the play, the uni student Ernie. For surely “nomads” has only become a term of abuse since Bruce Pascoe demeaned the natural way of life Oop North in Dark Emu.

Ernie is Cheryl’s brother – played to the hilt by Guy Simon. And Cheryl is Williams herself – one of three single girls, all working (is that believable at that time?), and all courting, as it was surely called then. The others are Stephanie Somerville’s Lulu and Megan Wilding’s Queenie. Anyone who has had the privilege of seeing Wilding on stage will know that she’s of diminutive height but generous build. But the extraordinary things is that you see her as perfectly formed until the moment when she chooses to tell you she’s not. And that’s almost certainly because her acting skills dominate the stage, diminishing everyone else’s height!

It’s not scene stealing. It’s simply engorging her characters. I’m sure Williams wrote the part just for Wilding. And her range goes from fury, to triumphalism, argumentativness and even winsome frailty at the thought that anyone might dare to fancy her out-there character. The moment when Queenie and Ernie finally get round to the kiss that everyone else has expected for hours is utter delight. Very Beatrice and Benedick.

And it’s a much more satisfying conclusion than the other, tripartite courtship involving Cheryl, her absent beloved Michael in Vietnam, and Ernie’s fellow-student Milo – a self-confessed wog with Italian parents. In fact, little is completely satisfying about these three. Michael is presented as choosing to go to Vietnam while 90% of other young men there were conscripted. His letters assure Cheryl of his continuing love, but are invariably received with a grim face by her. At one stage he seems to be allowing her free reign, just as Milo makes his move. At another, he appears bloodied on the fringes of a scene as though dead. Very confusing. And then there’s Nic English’s totally Anglo wog.

But while the courtships may confuse and delight, the bitterness of the siblings and Queenie at the unfairness of their Indigenous lot, so often made so brutally unwelcome in their own country, is the dark heart of the play. And Williams has written herself a great soliloquy on her under-privileged condition. But is that history – or is it still her pain today, I wonder?

Ian Michael directs Big Girls Don’t Cry with panache on Stephen Curtis’s minimalist revolve set, using some great musical references to the Tamla Motown girl-groups of that era. Milo even gets to warble a line or two of the Four Seasons’ Sherry “Won’t you come out tonight” as he courts Cheryl. But I note the absence of a dramaturg on the credit list. Such a role might have cleared up the moments when the passion and the politics faltered.

Big Girls Don’t Cry is running at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre until 27 April.