In the audience at London's National Theatre sits a woman who, 14 years earlier in the United States, triggered a legal and social earthquake.
In 2003, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was a violation of their constitutional rights.
Her landmark 50-page decision paved the way for hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples to marry.
Those marriages began to take place across America and around the globe.
On this night, the cast of the self-described 'gay fantasia', Angels in America, gave Chief Justice Marshall a standing ovation.
She was immediately - and gently - mobbed by tearful members of the audience.
"Thank you" were the only words most could muster.
It was a deeply emotional and unexpected experience.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in England, Wales and Scotland since 2013.
SBS reporter Brett Mason asked the former Chief Justice for her verdict on the upcoming same-sex marriage plebiscite in Australia.
"I wouldn't judge another nation, but I am surprised that people anywhere in the world don't understand yet what it means for people to love one another. It doesn't matter what their gender, what their origins, where they come from. And I just hope that we won't have to wait for too much longer before everyone in the world can be in love with and marry who they choose to."
Backstage, actor James McArdle, recites the most famous passage of her judgement.
" 'Civil marriage is an esteemed institution and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.' "
He's less diplomatic about the tone of Australia's same-sex marriage debate.
"The fact that this has been given to the public as 'an opinion' I think is an insult. I really think it's insulting. The fact we're even having this discussion I think will be an embarrassment in years to come."
A decade before her landmark ruling, Margaret Marshall sat in the very same theatre when Angels in America - a form of artistic activism, transporting audiences to 1980s America and the height of the AIDS crisis - premiered.
It had a profound, personal impact.
So she returned, 25 years later, to witness its 21st century revival.
The former Chief Justice says many of its themes - sexuality, race, gender, inequality, nationalism, fear and prejudice - remain just as fraught today.
"I think there is a hint of sadness that everything still feels as if we have so far to go."
Angels in America is a work of fiction, but for many, 25 years on, the struggles it depicts are as real - and raw - as ever.
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