Tag Archives: 2026

Review: The Social Ladder (Ensemble Theatre)

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Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Jan 23 – Mar 14, 2026
Playwright: David Williamson
Director: Janine Watson
Cast:Mandy Bishop, Sarah Chadwick, Jo Downing, Andrew McFarlane, Matt Minto, Johnny Nasser
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
Six people, occupying different rungs of social privilege, gather for a dinner party where envy, resentment and competitiveness simmer just beneath the surface. As the evening unravels, these tensions erupt into a series of heated exchanges, before everyone departs fundamentally unchanged. David Williamson’s The Social Ladder begins with the familiar and fertile promise of drama born from class conflict, but soon slips into a sequence of uneven debates that feel less like interrogation than indulgence—an airing of the wealthy’s grievances in which working-class voices are conspicuously denied wit, agency, or meaningful rebuttal.

Janine Watson’s direction, however, succeeds in generating genuine mirth and momentum, creating a theatrical experience that, while offering little in the way of intellectual satisfaction, nonetheless delivers a buoyant sense of jovial humour. The cast is admirable for a level of commitment that can only stem from a deep dedication to the craft of acting, particularly given the thinness of the material at hand. Their ability to forge a convincing ensemble chemistry is, in this context, quite remarkable. Mandy Bishop, as Katie, the party’s host, is especially commendable, deftly balancing wonderfully heightened comedy with an emotional interior that remains consistently believable.

Veronique Benett’s production design is a visual pleasure, using the trappings of an affluent home to create a staging that captivates through its considered sense of extravagance. Lighting by Matt Cox and music by Clare Hennessy are employed with welcome restraint, functioning as subtle embellishments rather than distractions, and mercifully avoiding the addition of further clutter to an already laboured affair.

The play concludes with a series of awkward, self-satisfied declarations from its wealthiest characters, who promise increased charitable donations in the coming year—as though philanthropy might serve as a redemptive gloss for their deeply unappealing conduct. Yet the gesture rings hollow. A society structured around fairness should not depend on the benevolence of the rich; it should simply require them to pay their taxes. As wealth inequality continues to widen unchecked after decades of escalation, such last-minute moral concessions feel less like insight than evasion.

www.ensemble.com.au

Review: Split Ends (Qtopia)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Jan 20 – 24, 2026
Playwright: Claudia Schnier
Director: Claudia Schnier
Cast: Claudia Schnier
Images by 

Theatre review
In her one-woman show, Claudia Schnier candidly reveals a lifelong pattern of obsessive behaviour, tracing it back to childhood, when she found herself compulsively trimming her own hair. In Split Ends, we witness her gradual unravelling in the aftermath of sexual assault by a former partner, as she revisits the regret-laden hindsight of missed warning signs and the painful inability to extract herself from a relationship that was, in retrospect, unmistakably toxic.

Schnier performs the work clad in gym attire, her muscular athleticism on full display as she interrogates both her own perceived vulnerability and the moral brutality of the person who exploited it. Much of Split Ends is deliberately confronting, making for an often uncomfortable viewing experience; however, the artist’s commitment never wavers and is beyond question. While the dramaturgical material itself may at times lack sufficient richness, Schnier’s assured command of video projection, lighting, and sound design significantly elevates the work, underscoring her impressive aptitude across multiple disciplines.

At the outset of the piece, Schnier repeats a refrain about “being enough,” deploying it as a kind of incantation—an attempt to ward off a pervasive sense of inadequacy and to summon a security that remains persistently out of reach. Girls and women are compelled to survive within environments engineered to erode self-esteem and undermine self-possession. Economic and social systems do not merely rely upon our subjugation, but flourish through our internalised surrender to the belief that we are perpetually lacking—that completion lies elsewhere, in something or someone beyond ourselves. The truth is that we require very little; yet to exist without yearning for what we have been so thoroughly conditioned to desire is an extraordinarily difficult undertaking.

Review: Mama Does Derby (Sydney Festival)

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Venue: Sydney Town Hall (Sydney NSW), Jan 15 – 22, 2026
Playwright: Virginia Gay
Director: Clare Watson
Cast: Benjamin Hancock, Calliope Jackson, Antoine Jelk, Aud Mason-Hyde, Annabel Matheson, Amber McMahon, Dylan Miller, Elvy-Lee Quici (with the Sydney Roller Derby League)
Images by 

Theatre review
Billie is only sixteen, yet she is already grappling with significant mental health challenges, including night terrors. Much of her distress stems from her mother Maxine who, despite her good intentions, has struggled to provide stability, never quite finding her footing as an adult. This changes when she stumbles upon the world of roller derby. Mama Does Derby, co-created by Virginia Gay and Clare Watson, unfolds with an engaging premise and a thoughtfully constructed plot populated by well-defined characters, though much of its early humour feels strained and overly explicit. Thankfully, the compulsion to elicit laughter recedes in the later sequences, allowing the work to settle into its emotional core and to land with greater resonance when it matters most. 

Watson’s direction makes imaginative and dynamic use of space, generating a sense of theatrical play that enlivens a story which might otherwise risk feeling overly static or confined to the domestic. Jonathan Oxlade’s production design cleverly draws on the world of roller derby, introducing wheeled elements that allow the set to transform fluidly and with considerable visual pleasure. His costume design for Nathan—the corporeal manifestation of Billie’s night terrors—is, moreover, a striking and memorable creation. Lucy Birkinshaw’s lighting is richly textured, further engaging the eye, and while Luke Smiles’s sound design at times feels overwrought and unduly intrusive, Joe Lui’s music direction—realised through a live three-piece punk band—proves an unequivocal delight and a standout feature of the production.

Elvy-Lee Quici, as Billie, is surprisingly convincing in capturing the rhythms of adolescence, but it is the emotional authenticity she brings to moments of heightened feeling that proves most impressive. As Maxine, Amber McMahon crafts a compelling portrait of a flawed mother, never inviting judgement, but instead allowing compassion for a woman who requires time to find her way. Benjamin Hancock is unforgettable as Nathan, imbuing his athletic embodiment of a metaphysical presence with theatrical extravagance and an exquisite measure of camp, adding a vivid and memorable dimension to the production. Crucially, the inclusion of a ten-strong derby team drawn from the Sydney Roller Derby League is, in itself, a meaningful and impactful presence within the work.

In Mama Does Derby, lives are depicted as complex and challenging, yet persistently threaded with joy. Billie and Maxine may continue to strive for better circumstances, and while a measure of harmony feels attainable, life is never presented as an unbroken state of perfection. As a coming-of-age story, the work reminds us that it is the capacity to navigate obstacles—and to locate humour within moments of setback—that gradually lightens the passage of time, making each successive year more bearable, and more delightful.

www.windmill.org.au

Review: Opera for the Dead 祭歌 (Sydney Festival)

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Venue: The Neilson Nutshell (Sydney NSW), Jan 15 – 18, 2026
Creators: Monica Lim, Mindy Meng Wang
Images by Jacquie Manning

Theatre review
The show opens with a disembodied voice recounting a daily ritual: waking each morning, drinking tea, smoking a cigarette, and encountering the apparition of someone lost. Fittingly, Opera for the Dead 祭歌 by Mindy Meng Wang and Monica Lim unfolds as a work of abstraction—an exploration of mourning and remembrance grounded in Chinese conceptions of death and ancestral veneration. Rather than advancing a conventional plot or narrative, the piece offers a theatrical meditation shaped by resplendent music and carefully wrought visual elements, which together seek not to explain grief but to summon it, to evoke and to resonate.

Singer Yu-Tien Lin leaves an indelible impression, commanding the stage with formidable vocals that move effortlessly between traditional and contemporary idioms. Lin’s extraordinary ability to inhabit the score’s gender-fluid demands—both in technical execution and in spirit, whether 小生 or 花旦—is nothing short of mesmerising, at times genuinely jaw-dropping. Leonas Panjaitan’s costuming lends the work a stately grandeur, ingeniously repurposing operatic and mourning attire drawn from Chinese traditions. Meanwhile, Nick Roux’s video design and Jenny Hector’s lighting permit themselves moments of greater extravagance; what they deliver, however, remains unequivocally captivating.

The music of Wang and Lim is anchored in something unmistakably ancient, yet it never feels ossified; instead, it emerges as modern, invigorating and alive. For those shaped by diasporic experience, relationships to cultural origins are often fraught. We cling to memories of a homeland as though these points of origin were immutable, even as we negotiate new lives and attempt to reconcile identities that perpetually straddle two or more paradigms. Opera for the Dead 祭歌 approaches tradition not as a binary between past and present, but as a circular continuum—one that speaks not only to those with ties to China, but to anyone bound, inevitably and universally, to the condition of death.

www.insitearts.com.au

Review: Takatāpui (Trans Theatre Festival)

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Venue: Carriageworks (Eveleigh NSW), Jan 10 – 15, 2026
Playwright: Daley Rangi
Cast: Daley Rangi
Image by Alec Council

Theatre review
The show opens with the artist preparing to head out for a date. Poised before a mirror and confronted by his own reflection, it becomes clear that what is being rehearsed is less a social ritual than a state of psychological readiness—an attempt to negotiate self-doubt as much as appearance. Daley Rangi’s Takatāpui is a one-person work that interrogates otherness and marginalisation. Rangi occupies multiple positions of difference: Māori within a predominantly white world, and visibly queer within a milieu structured by heteronormativity. Almost inevitably, the work unfolds as a meditation on isolation and loneliness, tracing the quiet distances that emerge when identity is continually rendered peripheral.

Takatāpui is threaded with humour, though its gravity is never in doubt. Rangi’s magnetism holds the audience in effortless thrall across the hour-long duration, his lucid embodiment of complex emotional states lending a visceral clarity to the poetic language he deploys with such quiet authority. What emerges is a portrait of profound vulnerability tempered by considerable strength: in his reflections on being brown and trans, Rangi articulates a narrative of injustice that resonates deeply, not as abstraction but as lived experience, felt and shared in the room.

It is striking that, despite being staged within the starkest of settings—an empty stage anchored only by a microphone stand outfitted with small electronic contraptions—the production’s lighting and sound design are intricately conceived and exuberantly realised. These elements do far more than support the action: they actively extend and enrich the storytelling. The resulting sensorial depth comes as a welcome surprise, amplifying the work’s theatricality and lending a layered, immersive quality to what might otherwise read as austere minimalism.

Takatāpui is written from a place of profound personal intimacy, offering perspectives and experiences that are singular and unrepeatable. That human beings possess a means by which such interiority can be shared at all is something to be cherished and fiercely defended. Art may be intrinsic to our species, yet it remains fragile—perpetually vulnerable to being sidelined, muted, or censored. In the present moment, artists have become increasingly rare, and alarmingly, this scarcity is met with a troubling complacency: an acceptance that human endeavour should be reduced to the bare logic of economic survival. To relegate art to the realm of the rarefied, to treat it as a luxury rather than a necessity, is both a disgrace and a danger. In doing so, we risk forfeiting our capacity to apprehend meaning, complexity, and truth itself.

www.greendoortheatrecompany.com

Review: Dear Son (Belvoir St Theatre)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Jan 8 – 25, 2026
Playwrights: Isaac Drandic, John Harvey (adapted from the anthology by Thomas Mayo)
Director: Isaac Drandic
Cast: Jimi Bani, Waangenga Blanco, Isaac Drandic, Kirk Page, Tibian Wyles
Images by Stephen Wilson Barker

Theatre review
Based on Thomas Mayo’s 2021 book of the same name, this stage adaptation of Dear Son brings to life twelve letters written by Indigenous men to their sons and fathers. Adapted by Isaac Drandic and John Harvey, the work translates Mayo’s exploration of love and vulnerability into theatrical form, extending his interrogation of modern masculinity beyond the page. In doing so, it reimagines how men on these lands might speak to one another—seeking to dismantle the harmful and toxic norms that have too often underpinned traditional models of male behaviour.

Framed as a men’s group gathered around a campfire, with the letters spoken into lived, embodied presence, Drandic’s direction of Dear Son foregrounds the intimacy that can exist between men. The production reveals the depth of emotional support made possible when fear, shame, and embarrassment are set aside, allowing connection and care to take their place.

Kevin O’Brien’s set design anchors the production in an earthy, grounded sensibility, while Delvene Cockatoo-Collins’s costumes lend each character a sense of everyday authenticity. David Walters’s lighting is emotionally resonant throughout, shaping each moment with care, and Wil Hughes’s sound design infuses the work with a quiet tenderness that gently guides and deepens our empathetic response.

Jimi Bani, Waangenga Blanco, Isaac Drandic, Kirk Page and Tibian Wyles comprise an ensemble representing First Nations men from across the continent. Each performer brings dignity and clarity of intention, and together their easy chemistry renders these portrayals of aspirational masculinity wholly convincing—models grounded in care, accountability, and a shared commitment to healing, both personal and communal. In their hands, healing is not an abstract ideal but a lived, generous practice—one that reaches outward, inviting audiences to imagine its possibilities for themselves.

www.belvoir.com.au

Review: Putting It Together (Foundry Theatre)

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Venue: Foundry Theatre (Pyrmont NSW), Jan 6 – Feb 15, 2026
Words and Music: Stephen Sondheim
Director: Cameron Mitchell
Cast: Stefanie Caccamo, Michael Cormick, Nigel Huckle, Bert LaBonté, Caroline O’Connor
Images by Daniel Boud

Theatre review
Titled Putting It Together: A Musical Review, devised by Stephen Sondheim and Julia McKenzie, the revue offers an ostensibly eclectic yet undeniably compelling survey of Sondheim’s oeuvre. The work unfolds as a loosely assembled showcase of songs—each brilliant in its own right—exploring intricate ideas and psychologically complex characters. Admirers of the Broadway master will find much to savour, and while the piece dispenses with a conventional narrative arc, the sheer intelligence and craft of Sondheim’s songwriting ensure its appeal to even the most discerning music lovers.

Under Cameron Mitchell’s direction, the production is polished, if overly restrained and polite, with choreography that renders each movement fluid and visually harmonious. Nick Fry’s set design deftly evokes the glamour of twentieth-century America, while Trudy Dalgleish’s lighting lends a complementary sheen that further elevates the scenic palette. Nigel Shaw’s costumes, though understated, are nonetheless elegant and flattering, contributing quietly but effectively to the overall aesthetic.

A highly accomplished cast anchors the production, led by Bert LaBonté, whose charisma and warmth cut through the material, ensuring the evening never lapses into stasis. Stefanie Caccamo’s relentlessly dynamic vocals are a particular delight, each phrase delivered with astonishing precision and expressive control. Michael Cormick, Nigel Huckle, and Caroline O’Connor likewise register strongly, each enjoying moments of distinction within a staging notable for its consummate professionalism.

Completing the picture, Kevin Wang’s musical direction proves a standout, drawing remarkable richness and depth from a pared-back ensemble of two pianos and rhythm section. Sondheim’s songs remain incontestably magnificent, and this iteration of Putting It Together demonstrates how even the lightest touch of theatrical framing can unlock a remarkable degree of magic.

www.foundrytheatre.com.au

Review: Burgerz (Trans Theatre Festival)

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Venue: Carriageworks (Eveleigh NSW), Jan 7 – 18, 2026
Playwright: Travis Alabanza
Director: Sam Curtis Lindsay
Cast: Travis Alabanza
Images by Dorothea Tuch

Theatre review
Travis Alabanza embarks on the deceptively simple task of making their first burger, a venture that is daunting from its very inception. Expectations loom large: rules to be followed, standards to be met, and a destination already mapped out for a journey that has barely begun. Conscious of the weight of these prescriptions, Alabanza invites a volunteer to join them on stage—specifically a straight white man. The choice is pointed rather than incidental, reflecting the reality that so many of the rules governing our lives, both in the UK where the work originated and here in Australia, are institutionalised by those who fit precisely that description.

A work that confronts both trans identity and lived experience as a person of colour, Burgerz is scintillating theatre that embeds danger at its very core. The volunteer does not appear briefly for light-hearted audience interaction; instead, he remains on stage alongside Alabanza for a substantial duration of the performance. This sustained presence heightens a palpable sense that “anything could happen”—a tension that lies at the heart of compelling theatre. More crucially, it mirrors the lived precarity of navigating heteronormative spaces as a trans person of colour, where the possibility of violence is never abstract, but ever-present, hovering in the background of even the most mundane encounters.

The risks Alabanza takes pay off emphatically. Immersed in an unrelenting atmosphere of vulnerability, the audience is held rapt, invested from the opening moments to the final beat. Alabanza’s exquisite wit and disarming charm ensure an unwavering alignment with them, while their intimate command of the material allows each unrehearsed moment of spontaneity—prompted by the surprise presence of a volunteer—to be met with razor-sharp sass and impeccable comic timing. Their capacity to generate genuine chemistry with a stranger is unequivocally extraordinary, resulting in a performance that is both singular and indelibly memorable.

Under Sam Curtis Lindsay’s direction, the work unfolds with instinctive precision, shaping a journey of unexpected texture and continual surprise, one that proves quietly and deeply emotional. The production remains consistently delightful while keeping audiences alert to its shifting rhythms and tonal turns. Soutra Gilmour’s production design embraces a pop-inflected sensibility that complements Alabanza’s signature, calculated flippancy. Lighting by Lee Curran and Lauren Woodhead, together with sound design by XANA, steers the staging through finely calibrated transitions of mood and atmosphere, reinforcing the work’s emotional and theatrical dexterity.

A man once hurled a burger at Alabanza in a public space, an act intended as humiliation and degradation. Alabanza can do everything within their power to reclaim and reframe the incident and its significance, yet a harder truth remains: it is not personal reckoning alone that must shift, but the conditions that permit such acts to occur. We watch Alabanza sink into deep contemplation, meticulously interrogating and dismantling the forces that render the world both resolutely and insidiously exclusionary.

What ultimately comes into focus is an irrefutable understanding that meaningful change requires collective responsibility. We are bound together by the inevitability of shared existence, and the work of recognising—let alone sustaining—one another’s humanity remains the most profound challenge of simply being here.

www.greendoortheatrecompany.com