Review: Mum Club (Griffin Theatre Co)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Aug 22 – Sep 20, 2026
Playwright: Jorjia Gillis
Director: Ian Michael
Cast: Alex Malone, Megan Wilding, Ruby Teys, Stephanie Somerville, Zarif
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
Having relocated from the west coast to the east, Sadie finds herself adrift in Sydney’s inner west, tethered to a newborn whose refusal to sleep renders the infant considerably more than merely demanding. Bereft of her customary support networks, she seeks refuge in a local mothers’ group, only to discover that the ways of white people offer little solace to an Aboriginal woman navigating alien terrain. In Mum Club, Jorjia Gillis reframes the experience of colonisation through the intimate lens of young motherhood, contrasting the slow, precarious work of genuine human connection with the frictionless, transactional relationships so readily furnished by a capitalist social order.

There is, unquestionably, a formidable moral architecture underpinning Gillis’s work. Yet the play too often sacrifices its emotional integrity in pursuit of comedy, deploying humour with a conspicuous straining for effect rather than permitting the story’s inherent pathos to generate its own organic levity. The result is a tone that feels laboured and blunt, undercutting the subtlety of the material. Ian Michael’s direction, while never losing sight of the production’s urgent raison d’être, similarly overinvests in comic business that seldom finds its mark, leaving sequences that should sparkle with wit feeling instead effortful and flat.

It falls to Stephanie Somerville, in the central role, to anchor the production in something approaching authenticity. Fortunately, she is granted several passages of genuine gravity, and in these moments she is transcendent. When the script allows her to set aside the artifice of sitcom rhythms, Somerville breathes vivid life into Sadie’s predicament, forging an immediate and profound connection with the audience. We recognise, through her finely calibrated performance, the particular weight of being Aboriginal in an unfamiliar metropolis, and the crushing isolation of new motherhood in the absence of adequate familial or institutional support. The supporting ensemble commits itself with evident devotion – there is no doubting their diligence – but they are ultimately constrained by writing that affords them insufficient dimensionality to truly distinguish themselves.

On the design front, Cris Baldwin’s production work succeeds in conjuring an expansive spatial quality, allowing the mind’s eye to roam comfortably across the play’s various locales without the encumbrance of literalism. Verity Hampson’s lighting proves equally adept, distinguishing between the production’s naturalistic settings with tonal precision while luxuriating in moments of heightened theatricality. Particularly noteworthy is Brendon Boney’s score, which repeatedly salvages scenes where the text falters, furnishing the production with a dramatic urgency that the writing itself too often withholds. In a narrative freighted with anguish and righteous anger, Boney’s music emerges as perhaps the most reliable instrument for conveying intensity.

In Mum Club, we are reminded that meaningful connections are rarely forged overnight, and that the friendships born of convenience are often the least enduring. Genuine community demands time, patience and emotional investment; only through that sustained commitment can we build a life that feels truly meaningful. The play ultimately suggests that no one flourishes in isolation, and that our strongest selves are made possible by the strength of those who stand beside us.

www.griffintheatre.com.au

Review: Forget Me, Please (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Sep 1 – 11, 2026
Playwright: Sophie Davis
Director: Jessica DiCosta
Cast: Kala Gare, Shannen Alyce Quan
Images by Lucy Parakhina

Theatre review
Andrea and Sasha are bound by a love that is as fervent as it is fraught, yet their union remains inescapably constrained by Andrea’s deteriorating mental health; an affliction that compels her toward radical, perhaps irreversible, measures in pursuit of restoration. Forget Me, Please, Sophie Davis’ ambitious if uneven work, presents itself simultaneously as an intimate romance between two women and as a work of science fiction with grand designs that it ultimately falls short of fully realising.

What elevates the material beyond its narrative limitations is Jessica DiCosta’s direction, which is marked by a palpable sensitivity to the fragile dynamics of a troubled romantic entanglement. DiCosta renders every subtle inflection of this demanding relationship with credibility, while her sustained commitment to dramatic intensity transforms what might otherwise have been a pedestrian storyline into something more compelling. Complementing this visual and emotional texture is the score by Jessica Meier and Alex Meier, whose music accomplishes the crucial work of atmospheric modulation, ensuring the production never lapses into monotony and frequently deepening the sensual undercurrents that animate this queer love story.

At the heart of the piece are Kala Gare and Shannen Alyce Quan, whose onstage partnership proves as formidable as it is finely calibrated. Each performer operates with admirable restraint, threading nuance through every scene, yet both locate precisely the right moments to unleash a raw, affecting intensity. It is, above all, the calibre of their acting that renders the production memorable. They captivate individually, but it is the unambiguous chemistry they have cultivated together that persuades us to invest in the turbulent vicissitudes of their characters’ complex bond.

Sasha harbours the understandable hope that love alone might mend Andrea’s fractured psyche, yet she arrives, as so many before have, at the more sobering truth: however majestic or all-consuming love may feel, it remains no panacea for wounded souls. Andrea must undertake a deeply personal journey of reckoning and recovery, one for which Sasha, despite her devotion, cannot be a companion.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au

Review: Singapore Spotlight (Sydney Fringe Festival)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Sep 1 – 5, 2026

The Happier Place
Creator and performer: Jo Tan

Pretty Ugly
Creator and performer: Theo Chen

Theatre review
In The Happier Place, creator-performer Jo Tan inhabits Val, a radio DJ broadcasting from some distant, post-catastrophic future where the populace lives in perpetual dread of “dematerialisation.” On air, Val erupts into hysterical laughter and dispenses an endless torrent of absurdist humour, as though the act of denial itself were the last available bulwark against annihilation. The performance raises an unsettling proposition: that the fortitude required to confront unrelenting horror may be a virtue more honoured in the abstract than actually possessed. Through this lens, Tan’s work interrogates an array of pressing social concerns, including the climate crisis, censorship, mental health, each rendered with the gravity they merit.

Pretty Ugly, by contrast, offers creator Theo Chen centre stage, where he interpolates standards from the musical theatre canon with meditations on romantic failure and the labyrinthine agonies of self-image. The piece traces the insidious alchemy by which feeling unloved transmutes into the conviction of being unlovable; Chen’s pursuit of catharsis through performance proves as intellectually rigorous as it is emotionally disarming. His exploration of queerness is distinctly situated: that of a Gen Z Singaporean equipped with an expansive, theoretically informed understanding of gender and sexuality, yet nevertheless navigating a society whose conservatism remains stubbornly, even aggressively, queerphobic.

As performers, Tan and Chen could scarcely be more dissimilar. Tan is relentless, muscular, tightly bound to the architecture of her script; Chen is elegiac, meandering, orbiting a loosely sketched narrative rather than adhering to one. Yet what unites them, beyond the sheer magnetism of their respective presences, is an unwavering fidelity to honesty. Whether their material is invented or confessional, naturalistic or operatically heightened, both works seem to arrive at an identical terminus: that zone of consciousness where evasion is no longer tenable, and where the only remaining option is to look, however unbearable the sight.

www.singaporespotlight.com

Review: How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Hayes Theatre)

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Venue: Hayes Theatre Co (Potts Point NSW), Aug 28 – Sep 27, 2026
Book: Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, Willie Gilbert
Music and Lyrics: Frank Loesser
Director: Cameron Mitchell
Cast: Simon Burke, Kaeng Chan, Taye Grant, Katie Green, Kye Hall, Wayne Scott Kermond, Georgia Laga’aia, Lucy Lalor, Max Macdonald, Noni McCallum, Kristina McNamara, Madeline Pratt, Jake Speer, Stacey Thomsett, Zachary Webster
Images by John McRae

Theatre review
A window washer stumbles upon a manual that promises to teach any man how to game the system and ascend the corporate hierarchy without the burden of genuine effort. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying may be well into its seventh decade, yet its dissection of capitalism (particularly its hollow mythology of merit and fairness) remains disquietingly pertinent.

What has not weathered the years, however, is its treatment of women: every female character is rendered as woefully subservient, stripped of agency, and reduced to cardboard cut-outs wholly objectified through the lens of 1950s masculinity. It is regrettable that director and choreographer Cameron Mitchell makes no discernible attempt to restore dignity to these roles; nevertheless, the tautness and precision of his staging deliver a production that is, for all its antiquated sensibilities, undeniably and irresistibly enjoyable. The vigour and momentum of the direction prove thoroughly engaging, as does the overall sheen of the presentation – an accomplishment owed in no small measure to its design team.

Dominic Foffani’s set achieves striking stylistic fidelity, offering a grand and officious vision of the era’s aspirational workplaces. Christine Mutton’s costumes delight with their judiciously balanced and vibrant palette, each garment meticulously tailored to present every performer at their most flattering. Peter Rubie’s lighting is finely attuned to the production’s comedic register, yet seizes every opportunity to conjure moments of genuine beauty whenever the score drifts into more poetic territory.

Jake Speer proves a leading man of considerable precision and detail, bringing formidable technical skill and commanding self-assurance to the role of Finch. As his romantic interest Rosemary, Georgia Laga’aia sings with exquisite beauty, and is fortunately granted several substantial musical numbers that showcase her considerable vocal gifts, even if the character herself remains stubbornly uninspiring. The ensemble is immensely likeable, and the production lingers in the memory for its many sequences in which the company’s infectious dynamism and polished cohesion testify to an admirable dedication in the rehearsal room. Kim Gilbert’s musical direction is a thorough pleasure, brimming with jaunty rhythms that sustain the audience’s delight throughout.

Much of what How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying asserts still rings true. Deceit and obfuscation remain entrenched in the structures that govern our social and economic existence; yet while the narrative exposes this reality with clarity, it appears to advocate not for resistance or reform, but for the cynical strategy of aligning oneself with those who wield power unscrupulously. More than seventy years have elapsed since Shepherd Mead’s original novel, and the corrosive effects of the corruption he described have not merely persisted—they have metastasised, inflicting ever greater harm upon the lives of ordinary people.

www.hayestheatre.com.au | www.lpdprod.com

Review: The Shark Is Broken (Foundry Theatre)

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Venue: Foundry Theatre (Pyrmont NSW), Aug 28 – Oct 11, 2026
Playwrights: Joseph Nixon, Ian Shaw
Director: Luke Joslin
Cast: Robin Goldsworthy, Anthony Gooley, Tom Stokes
Images by David Hooley

Theatre review
Protracted technical failures on the set of a Hollywood blockbuster have a curious way of forging intimacy among those marooned by circumstance. Such was the predicament in 1975 on the set of Jaws, where three principal actors found themselves with an abundance of time and a poverty of purpose. In The Shark is Broken, by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon, we observe these men—united by profession yet scarcely by disclosure—navigate the liminal space between collegiality and confession.

Directed by Luke Joslin, the production captures the texture of masculine camaraderie with undeniable authenticity; the performers bristle, bond, and deflect with the choreography of men who have learned that proximity need not entail revelation. Yet the play remains curiously surface-bound: its characters traffic in the signifiers of vulnerability without ever submitting to its discomfort. One admires the execution while wondering for whom, precisely, this exercise in emotional restraint is intended.

The cast is uniformly superb. Robin Goldsworthy brings an irrepressible, mercurial energy to Richard Dreyfuss, his vivacity keeping the proceedings buoyant even as the narrative threatens to list. Anthony Gooley imbues Robert Shaw with a brooding, caustic grandeur—convincingly sodden one moment, debonair the next, capturing the paradox of the ruined aesthete. Tom Stokes is a dead ringer for Roy Scheider, his impeccable timing lending the storytelling an organic, unforced rhythm.

The design elements are equally accomplished. James Browne’s set, augmented by Cameron Smith’s video projections, achieves a striking majesty while never permitting us to forget that these men are, both literally and figuratively, at sea. Jasmine Rizk’s lighting and Sean Peter’s sound design offer subtle but essential flourishes, conjuring theatricality from an environment that is simultaneously artificial and elemental.

The central irony of the piece—and perhaps its most trenchant observation—is that these men had no faith their film would become anything more than a troubled production. They did not relish their position; they did not apprehend the extraordinary privilege of their circumstance. Instead, they nursed petty grievances and private miseries, too consumed by their own discontent to recognize the historical moment unfolding around them. The play seems to ask whether lasting legacies are forged through conscious intention or merely accrue, unbidden, to those too preoccupied to notice. It is a sobering meditation on the cost of myopia—though one wishes the work itself were less reluctant to look beneath the surface it so reticently surveys.

www.sharkisbroken.com.au

Review: Heathers (Roslyn Packer Theatre)

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Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney NSW), Sep 1 – 19, 2026
Book, Music & Lyrics: Kevin Murphy, Laurence O’Keefe (based on the film written by Daniel Waters)
Director: Andy Fickman
Cast: Conor Beaumont, Emma Caporaso, David Cuny, Zoe Gertz, Calista Nelmes, Mel O’Brien, Abigail Sharp, Amélia Rojas, Nic Van Lits
Images by Cameron Grant

Theatre review
Veronica’s alliance with the school bullies proceeds from that timeworn logic: if you cannot defeat them, join them. Heathers, drawn from the 1988 cult film, is a satire of social Darwinism in which human decency has become a forgotten currency. To navigate the minefield of high school, its teenagers abandon morality entirely, embracing instead the brutal metrics of popularity and hierarchy—a dynamic that now reads as an early parable of neoliberal self-interest.

Andy Fickman’s direction is exuberantly playful, rich with a camp sensibility that proves genuinely delightful. Yet the dramatic tension never fully tightens; despite visibly escalating stakes, the production struggles to secure our emotional investment as the narrative unfolds.

The score is broadly enjoyable, though sound engineering too often lacks vibrancy—a noticeable shortcoming. The production, however, boasts considerable compensations. Gary Lloyd’s choreography is consistently crisp and wittily executed, while Ben Cracknell’s lighting design is inventive and relentlessly dynamic.

Leading the cast, Emma Caporaso proves highly impressive, commanding attention through both vocal precision and sharp comic timing. Her innate likeability as Veronica becomes crucial: she sustains our engagement with the narrative’s moral weight even as the production’s energy flags, particularly in its latter half.

Conor Beaumont’s J.D., by contrast, leans too far toward innocence, lacking the cunning and menace the role requires to cohere as a genuine threat. A deficit of charisma compounds the problem. Calista Nelmes delivers plenty of swagger as the head Heather, though she never quite convinces as an actual teenager. Particularly noteworthy are Nic Van Lits and David Cuny as the obnoxious jocks Kurt and Ram; their comic synchronisation is faultless, and their every appearance injects welcome energy into the proceedings.

Heathers ultimately delivers a dark lesson: we live in an era where defeating our enemies may require becoming what we most despise. Moral clarity would insist on doing only what is right; yet the musical suggests that some battles can only be won by speaking the language of power and brutality—the only dialect, it seems, that our adversaries understand.

www.heathersthemusical.com

Review: Equus (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Aug 21 – Sep 5, 2026
Playwright: Peter Shaffer
Director: Brockman
Cast: Cloud Fernandez-Montoya, Sophie Gregg, Stephen Madsen, Jay-James Moody, Gus Murray, Linda Nicholls-Gidley, Shalamah Tautaiolefue, Ryan Yeates
Images by Daniel Boud

Theatre review
It was in 1973 that Peter Shaffer wrote Equus, the story of 17-year-old Alan Strang, a boy who blinds six horses with a metal spike. At its heart, Equus is a play about desire: where it comes from, how it is shaped, and the destruction that can follow when it is denied. As a gay man born in the early twentieth century, Shaffer was almost certainly drawing, at least in part, on the devastating consequences of harbouring desires deemed socially taboo.

More than half a century later, director Brockman brings the play’s submerged queerness unmistakably to the surface. Where Shaffer had to veil the politics of Equus beneath explorations of religion, psychotherapy and obsession, Brockman’s contemporary interpretation points directly to the machinery of social stigmatisation and the wounds of marginalisation.

The production is as pointed in its message as it is atmospheric in its rendering. Brockman, who also serves as set and lighting designer, uses light to construct a performance space that recalls the stable where the unspeakable occurred, illuminating the action in ways that evoke desire and its eternal companion, brutality. The fluid movement between warm and cold tones mirrors the play’s shifting moral landscape, inviting us to question ideas of sin and transgression when set against the force of human instinct.

Dr Emily Brayshaw’s costumes remain in harmony with the production’s dark visual palette, while introducing subtle variations in colour and texture that keep the stage picture richly alive. Milo Mclaughlin’s sound design establishes a sombre timbre befitting the material’s gravity, though the persistence of his repetitious drone occasionally dulls the audience’s engagement.

Ryan Yeates delivers an admirably naturalistic Alan, bringing a vulnerability that makes the character feel both psychologically complex and undeniably real. He is simultaneously victim and perpetrator, embodying a story that first emerged at the dawn of the gay rights movement in Britain. Opposite him, J. James-Moody gives an extraordinary performance as Dr Dysart. He navigates Shaffer’s dense, philosophical dialogue with remarkable precision, revealing its intricate emotional and intellectual textures without sacrificing clarity. Beyond the cerebral pleasures of his performance, James-Moody is also devastatingly visceral, particularly in moments of profound self-loathing and emotional torment—qualities that become the defining concerns of Equus in 2026.

Equally remarkable is Shalamah Tautaiolefue, who inhabits the various horses throughout the play. Rather than simply anthropomorphising the animals, Tautaiolefue expands the production’s interrogation of taboo to encompass questions of gender, race and body size. Working with movement director Jeremy Lloyd, they create an entirely non-verbal performance of astonishing imagination and beauty, one that remains captivating from the opening moments to the final scene.

Alan has been taught to hate, perhaps unconsciously, but certainly within an Abrahamic tradition that leaves no ambiguity about who and what deserves contempt, and that habitually justifies violence as a form of atonement. His desires curdle into hatred for himself and for the horses; lacking any means to reject or subvert his indoctrination, he follows the only logic available to him, and strikes out at the thing he loves most, in a tragedy about the catastrophic consequences of teaching someone that love itself is sinful.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.danielcottier.com.au

Review: The Book Of Everything (Belvoir St Theatre)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Aug 22 – Sep 20, 2026
Playwright: Richard Tulloch (from the novel by Guus Kuijer)
Director: Neil Armfield
Cast: Julie Forsyth, John Gaden, Claire Jones, John Leary, Rebecca Massey, Bridie McKim, Pamela Rabe, Matthew Whittet
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
Nine-year-old Thomas lives in the shadow of a tyrannical father whose religious fanaticism manifests as routine violence against his wife and children. Next door lives a witch who appears to stand in direct opposition to everything the Christian church represents, yet she is the one who offers Thomas the greatest comfort and inspiration. Guus Kuijer’s The Book of Everything is a story with a profound moral centre, and Richard Tulloch’s stage adaptation captures that depth while remaining irresistibly joyful, funny and ultimately uplifting.

Neil Armfield’s direction brims with effervescence. Whether the production is boisterous or intimate, it is consistently moving, finding genuine emotional truth without ever tipping into sentimentality. The Book of Everything is about childhood innocence, but its reflections on growing up feel timeless rather than saccharine.

Much of that success rests on Matthew Whittet’s extraordinary performance as Thomas. He plays the boy with boundless energy and infectious delight, yet every burst of exuberance feels completely sincere. His portrayal is so emotionally open that we become wholly invested in Thomas and instinctively share both his fears and his hopes.

Julie Forsyth is equally captivating as Mrs Van Amersfoort. She brings effortless charisma and warmth to the role, making it easy to understand why Thomas is drawn to her. The tenderness of their evolving friendship becomes the emotional heart of the production.

Throughout, live music by Jack Ward underscores the action with remarkable sensitivity. He calibrates every shift in tone with surgical precision, guiding the audience seamlessly from moments of gravity and introspection to scenes of childlike playfulness. His score gives the production a magical sheen that invites younger audiences into Thomas’s imagination while reminding older ones how to reconnect with their own sense of wonder.

Kim Carpenter’s set design is built around the seemingly simple concept of an oversized book unfolding into each new scene. What could have felt obvious instead becomes wonderfully effective, framing the story within a world of innocence and possibility. Against that backdrop, the narrative’s darkest ideas about faith and fanaticism become even more confronting. Nigel Levings’ lighting is not especially showy, but it is meticulously judged, creating atmosphere with precision and maintaining beautiful visual balance throughout.

The Book of Everything ends on a note of hope, though Thomas’s future remains unwritten. Having witnessed the damage wrought by his brutal father, one might easily imagine him repeating that cycle of harm. Yet we have also seen the redemptive influence of Mrs Van Amersfoort, and the possibility that Thomas might forge a better path. More crucially, perhaps, the play reminds us that becoming one’s own person means the freedom to choose at every turn—and that the courage to choose wisely is the truest measure of character.

www.belvoir.com.au

Review: Harlots (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Aug 21 – Sep 6, 2026
Playwright: Emma Wright
Director: Janine Watson
Cast: ‘Ana Ika, Ella Prince, Hannah Waterman, Jo Downing, Madeline Li, Megan O’Connell
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
In Emma Wright’s Harlots, we are plunged into a subterranean world where the enigma of Hermione and Paulina’s sixteen-year vanishing—one of Shakespeare’s most tantalising narrative ellipses in The Winter’s Tale—finds its resolution. Within this liminal realm, we discover that Shakespeare’s other silenced women, too, have withdrawn into convalescence. Liberated from the patriarchal architectures that muted and effaced them, they pursue not merely restoration but a radical reimagining of their lives, forging identities unscripted by the tragedies that once defined them.

Wright adroitly interweaves characters from four discrete Shakespearean dramas, though the execution is not without its lapses: certain scenes fail to compel, and stretches of dialogue, deliberately opaque, risk estranging the audience rather than drawing it inward.

Janine Watson’s direction grounds the production in an emotional realism that renders the characters’ psychological reckonings viscerally immediate, even when their interpersonal dynamics do not consistently captivate. Kate Beere’s set design conjures a space simultaneously fantastical and authentically rustic, while Aloma Barnes Siraswar’s costumes strike a romantic register, evoking the iconography of Shakespeare’s tragic heroines through a lens of reclaimed feminine beauty. Luna Ng’s lighting achieves a wistful ethereality, and Clare Hennessy’s sound design suffuses the production with an unrelenting gravitas befitting the conceptual weight at stake.

The ensemble of six delivers performances of uniform excellence, each actor imprinting a distinct interpretive signature upon their role while sustaining a coherent presentational aesthetic. Madeline Li’s concluding monologue as Hero proves especially indelible—an outpouring of such raw authenticity and commanding power that it carries the production to its resounding climax.

The interrogation of gender, of course, extends far beyond engagements with Shakespeare and the classical canon. Patriarchal values permeate the very fabric of artistic production, naturalising conventions so thoroughly that they appear immutable, beyond scrutiny—yet it is precisely here that they must be dismantled and reconstituted toward more equitable ends. Patriarchy demands that theatre, like so much else, conform to particular aesthetic and affective regimes, thereby perpetuating its own dominance. And much of this occurs covertly: power achieves its greatest efficacy when it operates unseen, its mechanisms rendered invisible and its strictures undetectable.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.newghoststheatre.com

Review: The Boys Are Kissing (Qtopia)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Aug 12 – 29, 2026
Playwright: Zak Zarafshan
Director: Gavin Roach
Cast: Aisling Delahunt, Max Fernandez, Sonya Kerr, Willa King, John Michael Narres, Shab Tavakol
Images by Robert Catto

Theatre review
Amira and Chloe have fled London in search of breathing room, trading cramped city living for a house with a garden where their nine-year-old might roam. The trade-off, as they discover, is steep: the regional school gates prove far less hospitable than the cosmopolitan playgrounds they left behind. As an interracial lesbian couple, they increasingly find themselves at odds with other parents, a tension that Zak Zarafshan mines to brilliant effect in The Boys are Kissing, conjuring moments that veer from the absurdly comic to the quietly devastating. It is a play that feels genuinely of the post-marriage-equality moment: intellectually grounded without being preachy, its moral architecture sturdy enough to propel the narrative yet never so heavy that it drags the storytelling under.

Director Gavin Roach approaches the material with an admirable vigour, infusing the production with an urgency that reminds us queer rights remain a fight rather than a fait accompli. Yet the execution never quite matches the intention, with the production itself lacking the crispness necessary to draw us fully into the story. The cast often appears under-rehearsed, and while there are moments of genuine theatrical delight, their connections to both character and narrative lack sufficient depth. This diminishes not only the gravity of the material, but also the sense of joy and possibility that ultimately lies at its heart.

Raphael Gennusa’s lighting design brings welcome variation and texture to the atmosphere, although some scenes requiring more substantial shifts in location are not transformed quite convincingly enough. Akesiu Poitaha, meanwhile, deserves commendation for an extensive sound design that effectively transports the action beyond the mundane into spaces that feel altogether more evocative.

As queer people, we have long carried the responsibility of making life more bearable for generations of queer people yet to come. Now that it is increasingly common for us to have biological children of our own, the question of what we leave behind—and the kind of world our children will inherit—feels more consequential than ever. Yet the method by which we pursue that legacy need not change dramatically. We need only hold fast to the same principle that has always served us: the simple, unwavering demand for equality.

www.qtopiasydney.com.au | www.instagram.com/a_hello_darling_production