Venue: The Popsy (Sydney NSW), Jun 16 – 27 , 2026
Playwright: Lachlan Parry
Director: Lily Hayman
Cast: Andrew Fraser, Emma Kew, Esha Jessy, Pierse Cant, Evelina Singh
Images by Phil Erbacher
Theatre review
Set in Sydney, 2005, three discrete locales stage simultaneous scenes of casual, despicable homophobia—communities unwittingly laying bare their prejudices for the audience’s scrutiny. Straight Panic, Lachlan Parry’s triptych of short plays, interrogates the extent to which attitudes toward gay people have—or conspicuously have not—shifted across two decades. Though characters and settings diverge, Parry’s exuberant wit remains the production’s through-line, unmistakable and relentless. Director Lily Hayman leans fully into the text’s intentional absurdity, yielding a production memorable for humour that oscillates between the brazenly broad and the unexpectedly subtle.
The ensemble of five proves uniformly winning: each performer deploys confidence and exuberance to animate distinct personalities, rendering all three narratives urgently contemporary. Their chemistry is palpable, their collective delight infectious; the audience succumbs readily to their charm. Soham Apte’s production design achieves elegance through restraint, facilitating narrative clarity without unnecessary embellishment. Tyler Fitzpatrick’s lighting and Daniel Hertern’s score operate with comparable efficiency—accomplished, unostentatious, and entirely effective.
Straight Panic may refrain from delivering its political thesis with strident force, yet it demonstrates that certain behaviours resist sanitisation regardless of the humorous gloss applied. Across these narratives, we witness the evolution of public discourse: while private sentiment remains unknowable, the vocabulary of prejudice has acquired constraints. This is not progress in its ideal form, perhaps, but it is progress nonetheless—and not to be dismissed.
Suzy Goes See 