Tag Archives: 2026

Review: Imelda (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Jul 31 – Aug 15, 2026
Playwright: Donita Cruz
Director: Aden Abeleda
Cast: Alex Gonzalez, Tamara Lee Bailey, Ahlex Leyva, Teresa Tate Britten
Images by Andrea Magpulong

Theatre review
Maria Clara has lost her mother, yet the spectral visitations that haunt her remain tantalisingly ambiguous—are they truly her mother’s spirit, or the surreal presence of Imelda Marcos? For this Filipina-Australian woman, the relationship with her homeland is fractured and uneasy, much like the complicated affection many Filipinos still hold for the Marcos dynasty. Donita Cruz’s Imelda offers thoughtful insights into the diaspora experience alongside fascinating reflections on the Philippines’ recent history. Yet the work would be strengthened by a more deliberate establishment of its premise and a richer introduction to its characters. Director Aden Abeleda might also deepen the audience’s connection to the material by devoting greater care to context and conceit.

Teresa Tate Britten proves highly watchable as the actor at the centre; her tremendous focus is captivating in itself, even when the text stays too resolutely in the ephemeral. Alex Gonzalez, playing Maria Clara, struggles to fully inhabit the emotional terrain the role demands, never quite achieving the conviction required. Supporting players Tamara Lee Bailey and Ahlex Leyva, however, bring welcome textural and tonal variety to the piece. Both are memorable for grounding the atmosphere with considerable gravity, lending weight to a story that resonates deeply with many.

Rachel Adams’s set design shows little ambition, though EJ Zielinski’s lighting compensates somewhat, rendering supernatural spaces with a welcome theatricality. Video projections by Alyssa Dimarucut and Donita Cruz add memorable touches, their cultural specificity enriching the experience in ways the physical production does not.

Myth-making is, after all, a fundamental human impulse. We are creatures who must find ways to comprehend a world that remains endlessly mysterious; the not-knowing can feel agonising, even anxiety-inducing. To forge personal and communal identities—however provisional, however fluid—is itself a kind of necessity. And to move through life with direction, with hope for what lies ahead, requires that we craft the best possible version of volatile narratives, if only to carry us through the fleeting present.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.instagram.com/sapatosangelscollective

Review: Top Silk (Ensemble Theatre)

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Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Jul 31 – Sep 12, 2026
Playwright: David Williamson
Director: Mark Kilmurry
Cast: Nicholas Brown, Thomas Campbell, Laurence Coy, Rachel Gordon, Samir Nasser, Jamie Oxenbould, Jeremy Waters
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
Jane and Trevor have done very well for themselves as lawyers, yet there comes a moment in every ascent to power when the individual is forced to confront a dilemma that strikes at the very core of their humanity. David Williamson’s 1989 play Top Silk examines the difficult choices people make when ambition collides with conscience, and the personal cost of success when the stakes are impossibly high.

The text itself has not aged with particular grace; its dialogue can feel stilted, its rhythms occasionally dated. Yet director Mark Kilmurry infuses the production with sufficient dramatic tension that the script’s awkwardness recedes, allowing us to focus instead on how these characters navigate their precarious circumstances. The dilemmas they face—compromises between professional duty and moral instinct—still resonate, and Kilmurry ensures they land with genuine force.

Much of the production’s success rests on an excellent ensemble, led by two commanding performances. Rachel Gordon’s Jane is rendered with fierce conviction; she makes her character’s desire to do what she believes is right utterly persuasive, even as she allows us to see the professional integrity being quietly eroded. Nicholas Brown, as Trevor, achieves something equally difficult: he makes each ethical compromise appear not merely reasonable but almost inevitable, and does so without letting his character’s immense privilege obscure his underlying humanity. Together, they generate a compelling chemistry that gives the drama its crackle and the humour its surprising bite.

The design elements serve the production with similar intelligence. Ailsa Paterson’s set accommodates the play’s shifting locations with resourceful economy while still conferring upon the courtroom scenes their requisite sense of grandeur. Kelsey Lee’s lighting navigates a wide spectrum of atmospheric intensity with precision, and Madeleine Picard’s sound design seizes unexpected moments to introduce flourish and theatrical texture.

Society likes to pretend that right and wrong are clearly demarcated, but Top Silk understands that life rarely offers such tidy distinctions. When one is caught in the grey—where there are no convenient blacks and whites—it is not simply a question of what is correct, but of what one is willing to risk. The play asks how much an individual is prepared to sacrifice for the courage to go against the grain, and in this production, that question feels as relevant as ever.

www.ensemble.com.au

Review: Fiddler On The Roof (Theatre Royal)

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Venue: Theatre Royal (Sydney NSW), Jul 31 – Oct 3, 2026
Book: Joseph Stein
Music: Jerry Bock
Lyrics: Sheldon Harnick
Director: Jordan Fein
Cast: Ben Adler, Freya Boltman, Ellen Ebbs, Alexis Fishman, Caity Plummer, Maxwell Simon, Felix Star, Jacob Steen, Troy Sussman, Sigrid Thornton, John Waters
Images by Daniel Boud

Theatre review
Tevye’s daughters remain preoccupied with romance and matrimonial prospects even as the spectre of banishment looms over their community—a tension that, viewed today, unmistakably marks Fiddler on the Roof as a work firmly anchored in its era. The Broadway original debuted in 1964, and while its treatment of religious persecution retains its urgency, significant portions of the narrative have aged less gracefully.

Jordan Fein’s direction honours the text and its underlying concerns, yet there is a sharp contemporary sensibility in the handling of humour that prevents the production from feeling like a museum piece. If the storytelling falters by modern standards, Jerry Bock’s score remains imperishable; under Mark Aspinall’s musical supervision, it emerges as the production’s crowning achievement.

Tom Scott’s design is equally distinguished—the set is refined in its restraint, never appearing insufficient, while the costumes evoke the turn of the century with period fidelity, they nevertheless remain visually striking to the modern eye. Lighting by Aideen Malone offers a sumptuous visual palette, though it occasionally falls short of the vibrancy required to fully animate it.

The ensemble performs with formidable conviction, its members capitalising on moments to distinguish themselves, crafting supporting roles that feel lived-in and genuinely charming. Troy Sussman delivers a competent Tevye, though he lacks the magnetism necessary to fully command our emotional allegiance to the main character’s journey.

In light of the ongoing atrocities emerging from the genocide in Gaza, one might be tempted at the end of the musical, to reach for the familiar axiom that “hurt people hurt people”. Yet it is worth recalling that many who have suffered devote themselves precisely to breaking that cycle. Historical tragedy and inherited trauma may illuminate the roots of human cruelty, but understanding is not absolution; comprehension must never be conflated with permission. The enduring imperative of stories like Fiddler on the Roof is resistance—without exception, and regardless of who holds power.

www.fiddlerontherooftour.com

Review: Lacuna (Griffin Theatre Co)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Jul 30 – Aug 15, 2026
Playwright: Eric Jiang
Director: Nicole Pingon
Cast: Dominic Lui, Loretta Kung, Rachel Seeto
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
During 清明节 the Qingming Festival, Claudia botches a prayer ritual and stumbles into the underworld, where she not only encounters 孟婆 Meng Po, the goddess of oblivion, but secures employment from her. Tasked with extinguishing fragments of human memory, Claudia begins wielding her newfound powers with dangerous latitude, manipulating her mother’s mind in a desperate bid to engineer a more bearable coexistence. Eric Jiang’s Lacuna mines Chinese mythology to frame a contemporary meditation on generational fracture, centring the particular estrangement of young queer Chinese diasporic subjects navigating a culture that has historically refused them acceptance.

Jiang’s script is audacious from the first beat, yet it never sacrifices warmth for spectacle. The writing sustains a deft comic register throughout, undercutting its metaphysical premises with sharp wit and unexpected tenderness. This interplay of the supernatural and the sentimental gives director Nicole Pingon ample terrain for visual dynamism: she injects the staging with restless energy, drawing on traditional Chinese performance vocabularies to conjure something that feels at once ancient and urgently contemporary. Pingon’s comic instincts are equally refined, ensuring that Lacuna delights not merely through the ingenuity of its premise, but through a sustained, self-aware commitment to entertainment.

Production design by Hailley Hunt is elegantly uncluttered—never ostentatious, yet furnishing the cast with everything necessary to forge indelible characters and drive the narrative confidently. Morgan Moroney’s lighting proves quietly revelatory, shifting with disarming speed to render the supernatural realms in configurations that are frequently breathtaking; entire worlds materialize and dissolve in the span of a single cue. Sam Cheng’s sound and music, meanwhile, lean into operatic grandeur, amplifying the majesty of spiritual lore and lending propulsive dynamism to the production’s martial-inspired sequences.

At the centre of it all, Rachel Seeto delivers a Claudia of remarkable specificity, embedding every gesture with subtext and every line with nuanced intention. Her commanding physicality—assured, fluid, and precise—effectively defines the production’s hybrid aesthetic, synthesizing Eastern and Western performance traditions into a coherent stylistic whole. Dominic Lui matches her in physical accomplishment; his acrobatic work channels the theatrical sorcery of Chinese opera, while his impeccable comic timing lands with exhilarating precision, generating waves of laughter that keep the production buoyant even in its most wistful passages. Loretta Kung, doubling as Meng Po and Claudia’s mother, anchors the piece with a gravitas that feels culturally rooted and authentic. Her presence carries the weight of lineage and authority befitting both roles.

Meng Po waits at the Bridge of Oblivion, where souls must drink to forget, before they may be reborn. Claudia, however, mistakes erasure for repair, believing she can mend her present by vandalizing her past. We see in Lacuna that denial is a kind of trap—that confrontation, however painful, is the only genuine prelude to growth. The play asks whether we can ever truly move forward until we have faced what we most wish to forget.

www.griffintheatre.com.au | www.eswrkrs.com

Review: Goodnight Sweet Prince (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Jul 31 – Aug 15, 2026
Playwright: William Shakespeare (an adaption of Hamlet by Liesel Badorrek, Raj Labade, Jack Twelvetree)
Director: Liesel Badorrek
Cast: Raj Labade, Jack Twelvetree
Images by Campbell Parsons

Theatre review
Goodnight Sweet Prince offers a seventy-minute distillation of Hamlet, gathering the play’s most searing moments of introspection into a concentrated portrait of psychological unravelling. Yet in privileging the prince’s interiority, the adaptation strips away Shakespeare’s chiaroscuro—the interplay of levity and darkness, of courtly intrigue and metaphysical dread—leaving behind something closer to a single-note meditation on grief.

Liesel Badorrek’s direction sustains a formidable emotional pitch, executed with considerable polish. The result, however, is a production that feels curiously remote: relentlessly intense yet strangely unaffecting, as though the audience were observing anguish through reinforced glass.

Keerthi Subramanyam’s set design finds poetry in ruin. Drawing on the internal dilapidation of Shakespeare’s characters, the staging evokes decay with arresting beauty—flickers of faded grandeur and decadent ornamentation lending the production a visual richness that partially compensates for its emotional austerity.

Verity Hampson’s lighting is exuberantly theatrical, responding to the text’s most dramatic registers with bold, heightened imagery. Ross Johnston’s sound design is similarly ambitious, tracking every cadence of the abridged script with almost forensic attention. The score works so diligently to underscore each emotional beat that it threatens to become a co-narrator, at times articulating as much of the story as the words themselves.

Raj Labade brings formidable concentration and raw feeling to the title role; his Hamlet is never less than utterly committed. Yet the compression of the text ultimately estranges us from the very suffering it seeks to dramatise. We recognise the authenticity of the anguish without being invited to share it. Jack Twelvetree moves with remarkable ease between Horatio and an array of supporting characters, his versatility shining through in sharply differentiated performances that lend the production welcome breadth and texture.

There is, finally, the question of relevance. It grows increasingly difficult to locate our sympathies within the precincts of royalty; the historical convention of identifying with kings and queens now feels almost exotic. Suffering may be universal, but our compassion need not be indiscriminate. Perhaps there is a quiet liberation in withholding our empathy from those whose privilege has been maintained, across generations, at the cost of so many others’ disadvantage.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.instagram.com/goodnightsweetprinceplay

Review: Bennelong In London (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Wharf 1 Sydney Theatre Company (Walsh Bay NSW), Jul 18 – Aug 16, 2026
Playwright: Jane Harrison
Director: Ian Michael
Cast: Googoorewon Knox, Guy Simon
Images by Daniel Boud

Theatre review
An actor preparing to audition for the role of Bennelong—that celebrated Aboriginal diplomat from the turbulent dawn of colonisation—finds himself doing more than rehearsing lines. In the quiet of his living room, he summons the historical figure into startling, flesh-and-blood existence. What follows is a conversation across centuries: the ancestor clarifying his legacy, the actor grappling to comprehend it from a vantage point more than two hundred years removed.

Jane Harrison’s Bennelong in London is a work of remarkable intellectual architecture—thoroughly researched, astutely considered—yet it never sacrifices emotional immediacy for scholarly rigour. From a contemporary Aboriginal perspective, it interrogates Aboriginality and colonialism with clear-eyed acknowledgment of the endlessly complex entanglements that define life on colonised Indigenous lands. The play holds space for contradiction: the difficulty of honouring the past while pressing forward into the present, all the while remaining unflinching about the injustices visited upon this country’s rightful custodians. Though its themes run deep and serious, the work brims with humour, much of it arising from the friction between two men separated by epochs yet thrown together in intimate proximity.

Director Ian Michael handles this tonal balancing with supreme deftness, blending levity and sorrow in an exploration of identity and legacy that speaks as urgently to First Nations peoples today as it does to settlers. The emotional texture of the storytelling finds especially potent expression in James Peter Brown’s music, whether threading subtly beneath the action or rising to prominence as a centrepiece of the staging. Brown’s compositions pull the audience deep into the work’s intense sentimentality, rendering abstract historical grief into something viscerally moving.

Trent Suidgeest’s lighting design carries us fluidly between realism and the fantastical, lending credibility to whichever psychological territory the play chooses to inhabit, while discovering unexpected beauty in the theatrical transformation of an otherwise ordinary domestic space. Emma White’s set ingeniously weaves native flora into a contemporary living room, quietly signalling the duality embedded in everyday life for those negotiating Indigeneity amid persistent colonising forces. Her costumes, by contrast, adopt a more straightforward approach—two men from different centuries, simply dressed, simply meeting.

Googoorewon Knox is endlessly likeable as Bennelong, his charisma matched by a musicality that proves invaluable whenever the performance shifts into more traditional registers. Some of his storytelling occasionally lacks vividness—certain historical details risk being lost in the telling—yet the power of his ancestral invocation remains beyond question. Equally spirited is Guy Simon as the modern-day Aboriginal man seeking a history that is at once intimately personal and consequentially vast. The grace with which Simon pivots between lightness and gravity throughout the piece is genuinely astonishing, and his ability to bring such unguarded earnestness to this vital story feels especially precious in these cynical times.

Like every colonised being, Bennelong could only do his best within circumstances engineered for destruction. We might hope to resist with heroism, or at least to survive with grace, but the truth is more humbling: the everyday negotiations with pervasive, malicious systems of exploitation mean we will often fall short. Bennelong was far from perfect, yet we can see precisely why—and we can carry that understanding forward as inspiration, strengthening how we regard ourselves and one another in the ongoing, unfinished work of decolonisation.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: Pride & Prejudice (Sort Of) (Sydney Opera House)

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Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Jul 16 – Aug 30, 2026
Playwright: Isobel McArthur (after Jane Austen)
Director: Simon Harvey
Cast: Zoe Ioannou, Amy Lehpamer, Kaori Maeda Judge, Ruby Shannon, Teo Vergara
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
It is the old story, but told through five servants who have witnessed everything in absolute, unbroken silence. Pride & Prejudice (sort of) by Isobel McArthur arrives dressed as a theatrical reframing of the Austen novel, its dialogue translated into contemporary vernacular.

Yet for all the surface disruption, the narrative itself remains largely untouched. When the women from downstairs first appear, one anticipates a recalibration—characters and incidents seen from below, sharpened by resentment or envy. Instead, we receive the same familiar tale delivered through a more economical mechanism: five performers assuming every role.

Simon Harvey’s direction moves at a brisk clip, infusing the piece with a mischievous energy that carries much of the humour. Songs punctuate the storytelling, though the choice of largely 1980s hits for 1813 teenagers playing to a 2026 audience creates a curious dissonance. These young women are neither faithful period renderings nor convincing modern types; they are not of the Regency era, yet they are not quite of ours either.

The performers, however, are uniformly excellent—skilful, personable, and resourceful. Their chemistry is palpable, the rhythm they establish lending the production a polished, self-assured momentum. Their playfulness generates genuine laughter, even when the writing itself falls short.

There is, after all, a particular pleasure in laughing at the upper echelons—their concerns trivial, their constitutions fragile. We instinctively believe our own burdens weightier, our resilience greater, and take quiet satisfaction in their ineptitude. The servants of the Bennets, Bingleys, and Darcys would surely have offered observations far more incisive, far more savagely funny. That we do not hear them suggests some of us remain reluctant to listen to voices from below even Austen’s own.

www.goodingproductions.com | www.woodwardproductions.com

Review: Dealing With Clair (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Jul 10 – 25, 2026
Playwright: Martin Crimp
Director: Harry Reid
Cast: Arkia Ashraf, Bayley Prendergast, Daniel Fletcher, Jade Fuda, Olivia Hall-Smith, Talia Benatar
Images by Robert Miniter

Theatre review
It is 1986, and Clair is an ambitious young woman navigating London’s cutthroat real estate market, hell-bent on carving out a better life for herself. While showing a property, she encounters James, a man of apparent means who claims he is ready to buy—yet something about him lingers just beyond the edge of trust. Martin Crimp’s Dealing with Clair is rooted in a true story that once dominated British headlines, written for an audience who lived through its cultural aftershocks. Four decades later, and half a world away, the play still coheres for audiences who know nothing of the original scandal, though many of its finer social nuances inevitably fade in transit.

Director Harry Reid renders the central narrative lucid and gripping; the psychological chess match between Clair and James remains genuinely compelling. It is the surrounding scenes, however, that falter. Supporting characters appear designed to refract the social climate of the era, yet much of that commentary dissipates before it can land.

Daniel Fletcher delivers a superbly cunning James, skirting the line between earnest charm and quiet menace to create a villain who is both repellent and comprehensible. We despise him, yet we fully understand how Clair could be so thoroughly undone. Opposite him, Olivia Hall-Smith gives Clair a bright, infectious gregariousness that makes her ambition visible and visceral; we see the hunger for success that drives her to take reckless risks. Hall-Smith also threads a subtle innocence through the performance, a quiet suggestion of how modern capitalism preys upon the young, extracting sacrifices they could never have imagined.

Visually, the production is modest but serviceable. Soham Apte’s set is nimble and efficient, shifting locations without the drag of scene changes. Larisha Dowson-Taylor’s costumes largely succeed in transporting us back in time, though the supporting cast could use sharper visual signifiers to clarify who they represent within social dynamics of the time. Izzy Morrissey’s lighting deftly pivots between naturalism and heightened drama, lending the production an occasional, welcome jolt of theatrical intensity. The sound design, credited to Reid, is notably spare; a more aggressive sonic landscape would have done much to amplify the tension inherent in this disturbing tale.

Forty years on, one might hope that workplaces have grown safer for women, yet the truth is that most professional environments were built by and for men. We have spent decades retrofitting these spaces to accommodate broader participation, but we remain trapped in the architecture of an unjust foundation. Problems will continue to surface, and we will be forced to address each new iteration as it arises—because tearing it all down and starting over, it seems, remains beyond our reach.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.instagram.com/irregularprogramming.inc

Review: The Addams Family: The Musical (Hayes Theatre)

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Venue: Hayes Theatre Co (Potts Point NSW), Jul 11 – Aug 9, 2026
Book: Marshall Brickman, Rick Elice
Music and Lyrics: Andrew Lippa
Director: Julia Robertson
Cast: Elliot Aitken, Deborah Galanos, Jenny Guigayoma, Erika Heynatz, Evan Lever, Rory O’Keeffe, Georgia Oom, Marcus Rivera, Alexander Tye, Teagan Wouters
Images by James Reiser

Theatre review
Wednesday Addams has invited a young man and his parents to dinner with her famously macabre clan. The Beinekes are devoutly conventional, so Wednesday has extracted solemn promises from everyone to behave, just for one evening. The Addams Family: The Musical does not succeed on the strength of its plotting; rather, it endures through the brilliance of characters first conceived by Charles Addams in 1938 for his single-panel cartoons, and subsequently immortalised through television and film. The book, in truth, frequently falls conspicuously flat, yet the sheer likeability of these iconic figures—combined with Andrew Lippa’s genuinely accomplished songwriting—renders the production a worthwhile entertainment. Director Julia Robertson shapes the material with astute precision, delivering a show that may not provoke uproarious laughter but sustains a steady, pleasurable amusement throughout.

Robertson’s direction is a thorough delight, marrying keen narrative instinct with an impeccable visual sensibility. Dann Barber’s production design is nothing short of spectacular, drawing inspiration from the classic television series to conjure a monochromatic palette that is at once ravishing and mischievous, its whimsy perfectly attuned to the world we are invited to inhabit. Barber’s sets and costumes do not merely trade in nostalgia; they have been thoughtfully modernised, achieving a contemporary inventiveness that proves deeply satisfying. Jasmine Rizk’s lighting maintains the spectral pallor for which the Addamses are renowned, yet remains endlessly dynamic—frequently, and quite unexpectedly, beautiful. Zander Gaal’s musical direction captures the extravagant spirit of these characters with richness and verve, though it is occasionally undermined by sound engineering whose technical execution proves inconsistent.

Among the sixteen-strong cast, several performances distinguish themselves. Erika Heynatz is every inch the vamp we remember Morticia to be, her physicality endlessly idiosyncratic whether centre stage or in the shadows, and she supplies precisely the quotient of camp without which no Addams Family production can survive. Evan Lever’s Uncle Fester is an undeniable scene-stealer; granted the evening’s finest material, he excavates every nuance to leave an indelible impression. Jenny Guigayoma’s Wednesday brings the house down with formidable vocal power, as does Marcus Rivera’s Gomez. Both are technically commanding, yet neither can quite transcend the pedestrian dialogue they are required to navigate.

In 1938, as fascism gathered its dreadful momentum and autocratic ideologies seduced the compliant masses, The Addams Family stood defiantly apart. They remain emblematic of resistance to rigid, polite codes of behaviour founded upon little more than nonsensical logic. The Addamses may revel in the peculiar, but at its heart this is a reach for authenticity—a conviction that we ought to regard convention with suspicion, interrogating what so rarely is, and recognising that it ultimately serves only the privileged few.

www.hayestheatre.com.au | www.jrpaustralia.com

Review: Afterglow (Griffin Theatre Co)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Jul 9 – 25, 2026
Book and Lyrics: Sheanna Parker Russon
Music: Lillian M. Hearne, Sheanna Parker Russon
Directors: Cassie Hamilton, Lily Hayman
Cast: Lincoln Elliott, Cassie Hamilton, Lillian M. Hearne, Nat Jobe, Nic Prior
Images by Lucy Parakhina

Theatre review
Michael and Tom first cross paths at a barbershop quartet convention in 2012, back when the scene remained a strictly male preserve. There is an instant spark between them, yet neither has quite learned to love themself; as a result, they discover they cannot love each other as fully as they had hoped. Sheanna Parker Russon and Lillian M. Hearne’s Afterglow uses romance to explore gender authenticity on an intimate scale, while the competitive barbershop world surrounding it illustrates how gender is performed and policed in social spaces. A comedy musical with plenty of amusing moments and several charming songs, the piece nonetheless struggles to render its characters with sufficient depth; we never quite invest in their journeys, and the plot lurches forward abruptly at times, giving the narrative an occasional air of contrivance.

Directors Hearne and Lily Hayman compensate for the script’s limitations with undeniable verve, yet the production never achieves the crispness that would fully immerse us in the story and its characters. Geita Goarin’s set and costumes, while hardly surprising in their design, competently serve the world and its inhabitants. Tyler Fitzpatrick’s lighting could stand to be more responsive to the characters’ shifting emotional temperatures, though the overall visual quality remains adequate. As musical director, Hearne sets her sights admirably high: with only a keyboard and a cappella voices, she attempts to capture the full complexity of the emotions at play. The ambition is impressive, even if the execution occasionally falls short of its own reach.

Hamilton leads the cast with remarkable exuberance, infusing the proceedings with infectious, indomitable cheer. Nic Prior, playing the more subdued Tom, proves less mischievous but ultimately more convincing, fashioning a character that feels genuinely lived-in. Lincoln Elliott as Matt and Nat Jobe as Rupert also deserve mention; in smaller roles, they supply sharp comic timing and a welcome polish.

In reality, self-acceptance does not resolve everything the moment one arrives at a fuller understanding of gender. Yet it is true that for someone in turmoil over their identity, the world can feel relentlessly dark. When we first meet Michael and Tom, they are still chrysalises; by the final curtain, they seem to emerge complete. The more honest truth, perhaps, is that they have merely found their wings. The real work of learning to fly still lies ahead.

www.griffintheatre.com.au | www.purpletapeproductions.com