Sammy J made a musical about Burke and Wills. Don’t miss it

There’s a gay Asian man who takes over his family’s restaurant, dreams of moving to Byron Bay and can’t tell his date he hates the footy. A second-generation Indian-Australian actress aspires to be the lead in a movie with Hugh Jackman and not play a trope. An Aboriginal man seeks to share his lived experience but is talked over and ignored by characters representing the multitudes of settler identities.

Vidya Makan played Eliza in the Australian run of Hamilton, and her lyrics and composition showcase her background as a performer. It’s unsurprising that the soundtrack has been nominated for an ARIA award: it has a catchy, sing-along quality with lyrics that could unite the country in a shared narrative.

You’ll laugh, reflect, and feel hopeful. The final number will have you fighting back tears.

★★★★★
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar

COMEDY
Isabelle Carney | The Moment
Festival Hub: Trades Hall – Evatt Room, until October 12

“There’s a method to the madness” is the adage that best encapsulates Isabelle Carney’s new hour of standup. Like a calm yet chaotic pinball ricocheting off various obstacles, Carney eschews segues for non sequiturs as she bounces helter-skelter from intricately constructed analogies and pithy songs with humorous through lines to elaborate exposés, aided by audiovisual prompts and poems of varying lengths – each more uproarious than the last.

An artfully assembled, old-school television is Carney’s accomplice onstage, and blares to life at key moments to great effect, bolstered by magnificent light design. Fuelled by her impeccable comic timing, stage antics and energy that strongly calls to mind Broad City’s Ilana Wexler, Carney’s physical comedy enlivens a miscellany of bits, all of which cohere into something inexplicably cohesive.

Exceedingly weird yet somehow sharply relatable, absurd yet perennially grounded in social issues and pop culture, The Moment is an unmissable hour from one of Melbourne’s best.
★★★★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

THEATRE
A Daylight Connection | THE BLOK!
Northcote Town Hall, until October 18

Is THE BLOK! a work of comic genius? Big call, and possibly beside the point. The anarchic Blak satirists from A Daylight Connection skewer folly, and speak truth to power, with such encyclopaedic irreverence that a satire of anything can turn quickly into a satire of everything. Even genius itself.

In a future not unlike the present, acclaimed performance artist “the Master” (Carly Sheppard) has been commissioned to make an artwork so cosmically magnificent and masterly that it will literally SAVE THE UNIVERSE. Impossible? Not for the Master, who refuses to give the money back, despite a severe case of creative constipation.

How to unblock, though? Copy past masters? Get high? Ask a hallucinating AI assistant (Alexis West)? In a creative process bedevilled by toxic egoism, the anxiety of influence and various derangements of theatrical and critical culture, only divine intervention from a Blak Creator might save the day.

Sheppard’s performance is loaded with hilarious subversion, packing in camp and toilet humour, outrageous physical comedy and pop-cultural lampoon, alongside cheerful critique of existing aesthetic hierarchies. It lobs lightning bolts at every vice (and many a sacred cow) in theatrical and critical culture, and the comedic storm she whips up has a smiling eye of calm in West’s divine presence.

I haven’t laughed so hard in a long while.

Anyone involved in the theatre world will marvel at how up-to-the-minute the comedy is; fans of super irreverent humour generally – South Park leaps to mind – should love this show, too.

Although – like South Park – it might be too “tasteless” for some, there’s genuine liberation in satire this fearless and clever, and to me, the show’s dissection of the politics of taste is all part of its charm.
★★★★
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

EXPERIMENTAL
Bao Ngouansavanh | Sky Could Be Blue
Coconut Palms Restaurant, until October 15

French-Vietnamese theatremaker Bao Ngouansavanh’s latest brainchild is an immersive play that situates audiences in the heart of a bustling Vietnamese restaurant – none other than Smith Street’s Coconut Palms.

As they enjoy a medley of dishes, audiences don headphones and become privy to snippets of multilayered conversations between patrons and workers.

Actors are peppered throughout the restaurant, intermingling with attendees, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. They re-enact scenarios which range from a first date, to a sibling quarrel, to an unexpected moment of solidarity, to a son grappling with his father’s far-right political leanings – united by virtue of the diaspora, whether they be Vietnamese, Filipino or Chinese.

Playing a Vietnamese elder, first-time actor Chau Vu draws on her own experiences of pursuing a PhD in a rebuke of gendered expectations, while Andrew Dang references an endearing swear word in Vietnamese that his own mother berates him with.

The show reaches its stunning apotheosis in a simulated showdown grounded in the real-world example of the divisive Vietnamese Museum Australia, which has morphed into a lightning rod for complex political tensions in the diaspora.

It’s in its repudiation of the well-worn migrant narrative of dislocation and generational divide that Sky Could Be Blue shines. These sentiments are present, but the hyper-specificity of their expression elevates this piece of performance art into something altogether new and exciting.

The play refuses to sugarcoat intra-community tensions, but because it isn’t written for the white gaze, it refuses to demonise these very same communities either.
★★★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

COMEDY
Eddie Pattison | Dad Genes
The Motley Bauhaus, until October 19

Things have changed for Eddie Pattison since their 2022 debut show Just Super. For one, they have begun their gender transition. For two, their dad died. When it comes to performance, however, the biggest progression is their commitment to heart-on-sleeve, confessional comedy and ditching the superfluous thematics of their previous hour.

The two overarching threads are interweaved heartfully and seamlessly. Pattison details the love and support their father gave during their transition journey, and a mortifying tale of scattering his ashes. These anecdotes are interspersed with top-tier recollections of how taking testosterone is affecting their body, and dating another trans-masc person.

Dad Genes is an exemplary showcase of artistic growth – and one that you would be remiss to look over in the final week of the festival.
★★★★
Reviewed by Tyson Wray

THEATRE
Shannan Tamby Lim | Samson
The Motley Bauhaus, until October 19

Shannan Tamby Lim’s guileless clown creation, Samson, superpowered by a breathy voice befitting an endearing oversized bug, is off on an adventure. Tired of the lukewarm responses to his painstakingly prepared rendang, he’s off to travel the seas. Leaving his namesake island for the very first time, he encounters Duyung (a mermaid), Kuntilanak (a vampire), Harimau Jadian (a weretiger), Kelembai (Malay folklore’s answer to Medusa) and Malin Kundang (an ungrateful son). One of them holds the key to his personal history, and Samson’s life will never be the same after.

Unfolding like a fable, Samson is a meticulously assembled hour of exceedingly precise and effective sound design, atmospheric lighting and a colourful cast of characters expertly brought to life by Lim. Juggling personas as disparate as the aforementioned Sumatran mythical figures, Lim is a master at affecting a multitude of demeanours, voices and physicalities.

Samson is simply rendered in the way fairytales often are, but simmering underneath are the tensions of modernity clashing with tradition, deforestation – Sumatra has lost 50 per cent of its forests in the last two decades – and sea pollution, which sees rivers acting as unfortunate conduits for plastic. Steeped in a deep reverence of the natural world, Samson is transportive while brimming with humour and bonhomie. And like our most enduring parables, it feels simultaneously universal and timeless.
★★★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

COMEDY
Constantly Rumbling | The People (Bears) v Goldilocks
Traincendance, until October 19

If Goldilocks were tried in a court of law, what would be the verdict? Welcome to the silliest case to ever reach a fake judge. The concept came from a Stone Soup creativity camp that improv troupe Constantly Rumbling attended. By their own admission via a voiceover at the start of the show, the cohort had signed up to perform at Melbourne Fringe so long ago that they had forgotten all about it. Once they realised people had booked in and that a reviewer was attending, they pulled together something an hour before that was utterly ridiculous.

The sold-out crowd is packed into a space inside refurbished trains on the top floor of the building. Separated into two sides – supporters for the bear family or Goldilocks – the crowd were asked to participate by either calling out “objection!” or by volunteering evidence. It’s clear there are lawyers in the crowd, or perhaps just fictional legal drama fans, as someone accuses the judge of “leading the witness!” There was even a suggestion of collusion between Goldilocks and Baby Bear.

There are heaps of bear puns and TV references, including a play on the Judge Judy introduction and use of the Law & Order sound effect. This gives the show a feeling of familiarity among the spontaneity and unpredictability. As the crowd is asked to come to a judgment on the presented arguments, you’re left wondering whether there’s more to this beloved fairytale than we’ve previously been led to believe.
★★★★
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar

THEATRE
Mammalian Diving Reflex | Nightwalks with Teenagers
Werribee (various locations), season ended

Reviewing a work by Mammalian Diving Reflex is a bit like reviewing the last conversation you had. The Canada-based company makes “socially engaged participatory performance” which usually involves assembling folks who might never otherwise cross paths, providing them a structure through which to interact, and then just seeing what happens.

In this case you’re invited to wander the backstreets and public gardens of Werribee for a few hours in the company of more than a dozen local teens. They’ve designed activities to explore along the way, from a dance-off and karaoke to a bunch of getting-to-know-you games, and while there’s no spectacle or showstopping moment, there are countless opportunities for real connections to be made along the way.

It’s a gentle rebuke to the reductive image of troubled teens that generates headlines, and a reminder that today’s youth have much more in common with yesterday’s than we might realise.
★★★★
Reviewed by John Bailey

COMEDY
Chelsea Heaney | I’m Funny I Swear
Motley Bauhaus, until October 12

When a performer opens the show sashaying down the aisle delivering an absurd burlesque-style striptease, the assurance in the title – I’m Funny I Swear – hardly seems necessary; the audience is already laughing.

Having won over the room, Chelsea Heaney sets about examining what influences have turned her into the funny woman on stage before us. A task predominantly undertaken through standup, peppered with a skit or two, a song and some physical comedy. These interludes are pitch-perfect both in musical ability and comedic timing. No surprise then that she lists musical theatre as one of the reasons she’s funny alongside family, eavesdropping and more.

Heaney knows how to set up an anecdote for maximum laughter payoff, delivering punchlines and unexpected twists with theatre-kid aplomb. A nod should also go to her skilful audience interactions, which add charming touches to her stories. The show comes together as a satisfyingly energetic and charismatic whole.
★★★★
Reviewed by Lefa Singleton Norton

THEATRE
Ontroerend Goed | Handle with Care
Trades Hall, until October 19

Ontroerend Goed are known for thinking outside the box. The Belgian theatre mavericks explore the outer reaches of what theatre might be. From real teenagers talking about their actual lives in Once and For All to audiences voting actors off the stage in Fight Night, their provocative experiments interact with reality in surprising ways.

Their latest, Handle with Care, is participatory performance. The audience enters. There’s a box onstage. The show begins when someone is brave enough to open it and follows the instructions inside. What happens next is a collaboration between strangers that breaks down inhibition and attempts to create a transient, unique and unrepeatable collective experience. One definition of theatre, surely.

It’s a lo-fi theatre game, essentially, playing with the structure and terminology of theatre to generate unexpected moments of presence and connection. Does the show do what it says on the box? Absolutely. Did I do things I’ve never done before onstage? Um ... yeah. Am I going to tell you anything else about the show? Nope. This adventure’s reserved for those intrepid enough to step into the unknown.
★★★
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

COMEDY
Stephanie Dogfoot | Gold Star Bisexual
Motley Bauhaus, until October 18

Riffing on the trope of being a gold star gay or lesbian, Singaporean comic Stephanie Dogfoot presents themselves as a gold star bisexual –one who’s had sex with everyone. But how did they get to a place of self-acceptance while growing up as a queer person in the ’90s in an authoritarian state?

Singapore is perennially popular with Western travellers, but Dogfoot paints a picture of the country that butts up against popular conceptions. Queer content could only be televised at “family-friendly” hours with an important (and harmful) caveat. A famed lesbian media mogul had to remain closeted if she wanted to remain in business. Queer role models were few and far between.

But within these oppressive strictures, Dogfoot found queer utopias – in their Catholic all-girls’ high school where lesbians ruled the roost, in a lesbian poetry coven, at a local festival with 2000s lesbian It girl Ruby Rose as headliner.

Dogfoot chronicles their journey from Singapore to a small town in Ohio, which was less repressive than Singapore but only just, and to London, where they had sex for the first time under the most amusing circumstances. Interweaved throughout their musings on sexuality and gender are anecdotes on activism, writing and belonging.

Dogfoot is a confident storyteller who mines humour from their personal experiences, but Gold Star Bisexual is less a traditional comedy routine, more an illuminating journey through one person’s exceedingly interesting (often hilarious) life story.

Dogfoot’s uniform delivery and tendency to rush over punchlines don’t allow these comical asides enough space to breathe, but Gold Star Bisexual is a glimpse into an expansive life narrativised to great effect.

★★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

THEATRE
Henry Kelly | We Make Friends with Karl Marx
Festival Hub: Trades Hall – Meeting Room, until October 19

What would you do if you could conjure one of history’s most prominent political theorists into being? Introduce him to ketamine, of course, if you’re one of the Zoomers in the play, We Make Friends with Karl Marx. Katie (Meg Taranto), Hannah (Jahnavi Shivakumar) and Mia (Lakyn Gavidi) are squabbling over their history assignment when the power goes out in a storm and they become trapped in their classroom. Spying a ouija board, they immediately summon the spirit of Karl Marx, played in drag by the comically limber Myf Hocking, who sports a hokey German accent and cavorts onstage.

The Gen Zs of Henry Kelly’s play are a fully actualised cry away from their hesitant, self-conscious forebears. They’re politically astute, painfully in touch with their feelings, and capable of expressing them with gusto. Where the play could’ve been sharper is in the incorporation of Marx’s revolutionary ideas. There are glimpses of this – like when Marx schools the three on substantive action over performative gestures – but the lack of hyper-specificity means the play could’ve unfolded as it did with the resurrection of any key historical figure.

We Make Friends with Karl Marx is strongest when it leans into the zaniness of its premise – in its opening sequence, in the theatrics that accompany the trio’s conjuring of spirits, and in the generational differences between an 1800s scholar and Zoomers who take issue with his vocabulary.
★★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

COMEDY
Shayne Hunter and Ro Campbell | True Crime Walking Tour – A Comedian’s Guide to St Kilda’s Dark Past
St Kilda, until October 19

Notorious figures from St Kilda’s dark past are brought to light in this true crime walking tour. Comedian Ro Campbell takes a crew of curious minds on an exploration of the nefarious activities that define the suburb’s reputation to this day. Exploring the deeds of gangster Squizzy Taylor, sex worker Dulcie Markham and gang leader Chopper Read, we learn about the sly grog shops, illicit gambling rings, brothels and drug deals that drove the area’s criminal underbelly.

Campbell and Shayne Hunter have previously run tours in the CBD and Carlton, and this was their first in St Kilda. Campbell’s an engaging storyteller, at one point pulling out a barber razor near the residence where Dulcie Markham’s brothel once was to demonstrate the popular weapon of choice during her heyday.

What wasn’t great was the comedy aspect, which featured inappropriate jokes, including a jab about not being able to find the clitoris, which seemed inappropriate and unnecessary in the context. Worth a trip to the south-east if you’re a fan of the TV series Underbelly and can stomach the poor taste in humour.
★★★
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar

CIRCUS
Casey Lorae | La Folie After Dark
Gasworks Theatre, until October 11

It begins with a warning: brace yourself for “blasphemy, BDSM and assault”. Seated in a dark, hazy room looking at a suspended hoop and chains, it’s not entirely clear what you’ve walked into. But once the first performer contorts her body, uncertainty is replaced by sheer awe. Metres in the air, she lifts and twists her body effortlessly, draping her limbs around the hoop as if she were liquid.

The power of the human body is on full display, whether on a hoop, trapeze, silks or straps. Artists freefall from ceiling-height, do the splits in midair, and lift other artists by the neck with their feet. It defies belief yet appears so sultry and seamless.

Though each individual act astounds, the production as a whole lacks cohesion. A baffling attempt to link two performances using a prop cup interrupts your stunned reverie. La Folie struggles to connect the dots, but it’s still testament to the breathtaking strength and seductiveness of the human form.
★★★
Reviewed by Nell Geraets

COMEDY
Nadun Hetti | Who Wants To Be a Citizen?
The Motley Bauhaus, until October 19

Nadun Hetti doesn’t quite seem to know what kind of comedy he wants to perform to his audience. Is it gallows or poignant humour?

Having come through the Comedy Festival’s RAW Comedy program, Hetti draws heavily on his Sri Lankan heritage and has an abundance of solid material. Some riskier jokes, however, don’t reliably land.

Hetti is obviously still finding his feet while treading the boards – the show requires a rotating opening act (tonight, his tech, of all people, delivered a warm-up of meandering material) to pad out the 50 minutes. He seems uneasy with crowd work. Nonetheless, it’s a promising if not uneven debut from a unique voice – but it needs a lot of fine-tuning.
★★
Reviewed by Tyson Wray

THEATRE
Dylan Murphy and Tom Henry Jones | In the Dark
Trades Hall, until October 12

Somewhere in a secret bunker, five comedians are waiting for electricity to be siphoned from a dystopian wasteland so they can start their humble radio show: the right hand of an authoritarian regime trying to calm rebellion via foley artistry, morality tales and theatricalised propaganda. Imagine an Orwellian Orson Welles, or The Hunger Games as an interwar broadcast. The rebels are outside, the disembodied voice of your big brother-like leader is waiting to deliver performance notes via firing squad, and there’s a piss bucket if you need it.

It’s a fantastic premise, and writers Dylan Murphy and Tom Henry Jones have assembled a stellar cast to pull it off. Hannah Camilleri transforms into a crow with the flap of a plastic tree and an uncanny squawk. Maria Angelico switches from bawdy milk maid to doe-eyed lover with ease. And Mark Mitchell’s sonorous voice is perfect as the veteran actor desperate to appeal to butter-churning women aged 16 to 25.

But too much exposition ties the script in knots. And moments of foley artistry – often the most interesting part of theatricalised radio plays – are too underdeveloped to justify why the show has been staged at all. Ultimately, this killer cast is not given enough to do, and this killer premise fails to find its feet.
★★
Reviewed by Guy Webster