Devine, who was born in Camberwell in London, arrived in Sydney with her husband after spending her teenage years working as a prostitute. She moved to Surry Hills where she took advantage of the ban on selling booze in Sydney after 6pm and opened sly grog shops, selling good-quality alcohol and drugs. Leigh was born and raised in Dubbo in a large Roman Catholic family. Leigh and Devine were certainly tough, entrepreneurial women at a time when men ruled the roost. It was subsequently rewritten for Australian audiences and now has its Australian premiere at the Hayes Theatre.

They pitched the idea of a two-hander musical to Cheryl Katz, Artistic Director at Luna Stage in New Jersey, and the show had its premiere in the US in February 2018.

The show, with book and lyrics by Kate Mulley and music by Andy Peterson, was inspired by director Benita De Wit, who came across a cartoon of Kate Leigh and sent it to Peterson and Mulley with the comment that it could become the basis for something.

But Razorhurst, which tells their combined stories, still has a way to go if it is to do more than simply tell us what happened to them.Īmelia Cormack and Debora Krizak, with Lucy Bermingham on piano in Hayes Theatre Co’s Razorhurst. Crime queens Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, who were bitter rivals during the 1920s when their gangs fought it out on the streets of East Sydney in the “razor gang wars”, are a fascinating pair of protagonists for a musical, particularly in the #MeToo era.

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