At first glimpse Ley’s  story seems dramatic. Suspected of at least two murders in Sydney and the brains behind  a scam to rid the country of Prickly Pear, he was eventually convicted of  murder and hanged in his native England in 1947.

But as Wilkins’s five-act play reveals in the very first few minutes, Ley was throughout his life a shyster and hypocrite. Over more than two hours, we also discover that  he was a pompous windbag, a philanderer and a murderer.

Unlike heroes of tragedy, there is no hint of self-insight as Ley progresses from one scheme to another and eventually to his downfall.

Wilkins and director Tom O’Neill are faced with the dilemma of making a two-dimensional character three-dimensional, but even in the hands of the eloquent Craig Higgs as the adult Thomas John Ley, there is no suggestion at all of the complex character the script aims at.

A very long evening that traverses Ley’s years spent in NSW eventually bogs down in a staged crime-drama. No doubt the courtroom material presented in the final act was derived from the documents Wilkins found in the NLA, but documentary accuracy does not a drama make, especially when the fall of Ley is guaranteed. Revolted we may be by capital punishment, but by the end of the show when all the characters come to haunt him on stage, it is clear that he has got to no more than his just deserts.

It was a dramaturgical mistake to introduce into a semi-naturalistic narrative a Brechtian-style musical choral figure and two downstage “street” versifiers who, at one point,  recite an extract from Henry Lawson’s “Faces in the Street” as cast members wander by.  These interventions serve to slow down the action in the already cluttered  early acts and later become a distraction.

The variable acting, fluffed lines, two-dimensional set and indifferent costumes did nothing to assist the showcasing of an entirely new script.