Tag Archives: 2026

4-star review: Islander (ATYP)

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Venue: The Popsy (Sydney NSW), Oct 6 – 17 , 2026
Creator: Amy Draper
Book: Stewart Melton
Music & Lyrics: Finn Anderson
Director: Hayden Tonazzi
Cast: Georgia Laga’aia, Rebecca Ordiz
Images by Robert Catto

Theatre review
On the remote Scottish isle of Kinnan, a young girl named Eilidh discovers a beached whale calf, and fails to save it. Soon after, a mysterious stranger named Arran washes ashore from the very waters the whale departed, and an improbable friendship takes root between them. Islander, a 2017 musical written for two performers with a score composed almost entirely of the human voice, unfolds from this slender premise into something altogether more affecting.

Finn Anderson’s songs are wonderfully imaginative, possessing a transcendent quality that seems to reach out and hold the audience. Lauren Shaw’s musical direction is thrilling in its unpredictability, and together with Otto Zagala’s atmospheric sound design and Cameron Bartle’s exquisite sound engineering (a technical feat deserving of particular praise) the production’s aural landscape proves quite remarkable. The plot, drawn from Scottish folklore, is genuinely engaging, though when it reaches its dramatic apex, events take on a sudden, hurried momentum that leaves one somewhat disoriented; the abrupt shift in pace introduces a trace of incoherence into what had been, until then, a carefully measured narrative.

Visually, the set is spare, comprising a simple circular platform, but it is in the costumes that production designer Angelina Daniel makes her strongest impression, crafting pieces that speak to our affinity for the aesthetic traditions of the Pacific region. Tim Hope’s lighting could perhaps afford to be more extravagant, yet there is an unmistakable melancholy woven into his design that resonates beautifully with the production’s ecological undertones. Director Hayden Tonnazi imbues the staging with an emotional intensity that renders the experience genuinely compelling; there is a crispness to every element that keeps the audience rapt throughout.

Performers Georgia Laga’aia and Rebecca Ordiz are nothing short of astonishing. Their precision is matched only by their flawless chemistry, one senses a rigour of rehearsal behind every gesture, every harmony, and their storytelling is so assured that surrendering to it feels effortless.

Beyond the stage, the production carries an urgent resonance. The state of our ecology is, by any honest measure, in disarray. We are but one species among millions, yet the scale of our impact is immeasurably outsized. To witness the consequences of that impact, is to confront an uncomfortable truth: we are custodians of this planet, whether we accept the mantle or not. That we have so often behaved as plunderers instead is, beyond question, a profound shame.

www.atyp.com.au

Review: A Room With A View (Belvoir St Theatre)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Oct 3 – Nov 1, 2026
Playwright: Grace Chapple (from the novel by E.M. Forster)
Director: Hannah Goodwin
Cast: Kate Atkinson, Tom Conroy, Tomáš Kantor, Hayley McElhinney, Nathalie Morris, Patrick Williams, Luke Wiltshire, Charles Wu
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
There is little doubt about the enduring significance of E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View. Its examination of class and its suppressive force, particularly in relation to women, alongside its critique of women’s complicity in upholding patriarchal values, allows the novel to retain considerable contemporary resonance more than a century after its publication. In this stage adaptation, Grace Chapple wisely foregrounds the novel’s quietly radical feminist undercurrent, and much of the dialogue glitters with a welcome modern wit. Yet for all the charm of Forster’s prose, one suspects the source material was never entirely suited to the stage: a slender plot, more texture than event, strains to sustain a full evening of theatre.

Chapple endows each character with endearing particularity, and the cast is easy to follow; even so, the narrative grows rather lacking in its later stretches, precisely when one expects tensions to crest. Director Hannah Goodwin’s instinct, then, to compensate with sheer theatricality, is well founded. It is her mischievous reimagining of key scenarios, in tandem with choreographer Elle Evangelista, that supplies this production’s visceral pleasures. A tennis match, a lakeside swim, an impromptu road trip — these sequences abandon dialogue altogether and surrender instead to the irreducible magic of live performance, to wonderful effect. Madeleine Picard’s sound design and Grace Ferguson’s music amplify these moments of heightened theatricality beautifully, while Amelia Lever-Davidson’s lighting conjures unexpected textures against a disappointingly drab set by Zoë Atkinson, who fares far better with costumes that evoke the period elegantly without ever encumbering the performers.

As Lucy, Nathalie Morris is immediately likeable and impressively attuned to both the comedy and pathos of the role. Yet the abrupt psychological transformations her character undergoes remain difficult to fully comprehend. Her love interest, George, is played by Luke Wiltshire with an appealing vulnerability. More immediately memorable, however, are the production’s comic crowd-pleasers, with Kate Atkinson, Tomáš Kantor and Hayley McElhinney displaying exquisite timing and an instinctive understanding of the humorous possibilities of their characters. It is ultimately the production’s entertainment value, rather than the dramatic force of its source material, that makes the strongest impression.

At the story’s conclusion, we witness a woman breaking free from the shackles that have entrapped so many women for centuries. Lucy’s experience, however, is presented as an exception: her freedom appears to be the consequence of her individual courage to love, a courage that enables her to escape the constraints imposed upon her. But there is something troubling about this formulation. It is not that women have historically lacked courage. The more difficult truth is that courage alone is rarely sufficient to overcome the deeply entrenched forces that constrain women’s possibilities for genuine fulfilment.

Lucy changes the circumstances of her own life, largely through an act of individual defiance. But this is where the story feels less convincing from a contemporary feminist perspective. Emancipation cannot depend solely upon the exceptional courage of an individual woman to resist the structures around her. It is far more often through solidarity, collective action and the dismantling of those structures themselves that meaningful liberation becomes possible. Lucy may find her way out, but the question that lingers is what happens to all the women who she leaves behind.

www.belvoir.com.au

Review: The Unfriend (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney NSW), Sep 29 – Oct 31, 2026
Playwright: Steven Moffat
Director: Simon Phillips
Cast: Ty Arnott, Brooklyn Davies, Huw Higginson, Alex Lee, Helen Thomson, Tim Walter, and Ben Wood.
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
The play’s prologue issues an early warning of sorts, deriding those who read publications such as The Guardian and suggesting that politically engaged people, particularly those on the left, derive a peculiar pleasure from being outraged by the news they consume. In doing so, Steven Moffat seems to announce that The Unfriend is deliberately apolitical, positioning itself outside the anxieties and ideological conflicts of the contemporary world before proceeding to make us laugh without engaging with any of the concerns that occupy us as real people.

Debbie and Peter meet Elsa while on holiday and, in an unfortunate lapse of judgement, invite her to stay at their English home. When they subsequently discover that Elsa is suspected of six murders, they have ample reason to reconsider their hospitality, yet find themselves incapable of actually disinviting their American guest. There is, perhaps, something enduringly recognisable in the British tendency towards excessive politeness, but comedy built around the inability to say no has arguably exhausted itself. The joke has been rehearsed so many times that its once-awkward charm has long since given way to trite familiarity.

Director Simon Phillips appears entirely conscious of the broadness of the comedy he has inherited. An extended sequence of toilet humour not only refuses to apologise for its vulgarity but positively revels in it, as though the production were declaring that this is precisely what we have come to see. There is no pretension, Phillips seems to insist, but neither is there any ambition towards intellectual or aesthetic sophistication. The production embraces its coarseness with an almost defiant lack of embarrassment.

Elsa is played by the eminently accomplished Helen Thomson, who demonstrates an impressive ability to extract comedy from almost anything, however banal or clichéd the material. Alex Lee and Tim Walter bring considerable energy to their portrayals of the painfully polite couple, supplementing their characters’ social awkwardness with an appropriate absurdity that helps sustain the increasingly implausible narrative. Ty Arnott and Huw Higginson likewise make the most of their eccentric characters, producing moments of genuine theatrical pleasure even when the comic mechanisms themselves remain conspicuously and toe-curlingly obvious.

The set design by Isabel Hudson is also worthy of commendation. Its immaculate evocation of middle-class respectability provides the production with a visual sumptuousness that compensates, to some extent, for the cheapness of the comic devices employed in the action itself. The contrast is almost revealing: the stage looks substantially more elegant than the material unfolding upon it.

Ben Phillipe wrote in 2021 that “if you have a life that leaves you fool proof to politics, your politics approximate to ‘privileged.’” For many of us, the present is experienced as a period of genuine emergency, making it difficult to accept the notion of political neutrality as an innocent artistic position. When artists, or indeed anyone with a public platform, declare themselves apolitical, it can instead suggest a position of sufficient privilege to permit looking away, to disregard the forces of social and political disintegration taking place around them.

The problem is not simply that such detachment can appear complacent. It is that the idea of being untouched by politics is itself a political luxury. We live within structures in which our lives are inevitably interconnected, and the rot permitted to fester in one part of society rarely remains contained there. More troubling still, indifference to the persecution of others risks creating the conditions in which authoritarian and fascistic tendencies can become increasingly emboldened. The targets may change, but the machinery of persecution does not require a permanent target; once one group has been exhausted, another can readily be found.

The Unfriend may therefore succeed on its own terms as an uncomplicated comedy, but its insistence on keeping politics at arm’s length becomes increasingly conspicuous. What the production treats as an escape from contemporary anxieties can also be understood as an unwillingness to confront them. In a moment when so much of public life is defined by precisely the political concerns the play chooses to dismiss, that refusal to engage begins to feel less like neutrality than a statement in itself.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: The Elevator (Ensemble Theatre)

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Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Sep 18 – Oct 18, 2026
Playwright: Eloise Snape
Director: Anthea Williams
Cast: Di Adams, Leeanna Walsman, Shirong Wu
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
The CEO of Eco Engines finds herself trapped inside her company’s AI-operated lift alongside two employees. The claustrophobic setting is tense enough, but it is the recent fatal accident involving one of Eco Engines’ autonomous vehicles that truly exposes the fault lines between them. Eloise Snape’s The Elevator is set in the near future, at a moment when the proliferation of robotics is accelerating and corporations seize every opportunity to automate in pursuit of profit, with scant regard for the ethical consequences left in their wake.

Snape’s decision to confine three women with radically different perspectives inside a malfunctioning lift creates fertile ground for an interrogation of some of today’s most pressing technological and moral dilemmas. The play is astute in its examination of accountability, corporate power and artificial intelligence, but much of its comedy fails to land. Anthea Williams’ direction is similarly unable to unlock the script’s humour, leaving the first half feeling laboured and occasionally awkward. Once the production relinquishes its obligation to be funny and allows its darker instincts to take over, it becomes something considerably more compelling.

Leeanna Walsman’s Margot, the CEO, is perhaps a touch too naturalistic, never quite locating the heightened absurdity of a ruthless executive in crisis mode. Yet her final monologue is extraordinary, delivering the production’s emotional and intellectual climax with breathtaking force. Shirong Wu brings irresistible effervescence to Alison, the company’s PR specialist, injecting buoyancy into scenes that might otherwise collapse under the weight of exposition. As maintenance worker Ollie, Di Adams is somewhat restrained emotionally, but her grounded presence lends the play an essential moral gravity.

Kelsey Lee’s set and lighting design cleverly overcome the visual limitations of a story confined entirely to a lift. Through meticulously calibrated shifts in colour, intensity and atmosphere, she creates imagery of surprising richness and variety within an inherently static environment. Daniel Herten’s sound design is equally effective, its ominous undertones gradually intensifying until they become an almost subliminal expression of the characters’ mounting dread.

From the outside, it is easy to imagine that Margot could simply refuse the responsibilities that violate her conscience. Yet the play’s more unsettling insight is that she no longer believes refusal is available to her. She has travelled too far down a path that now feels irreversible, where technological progress and commercial expansion have become moral absolutes rather than choices.

The Elevator ultimately suggests that it may already be too late to appeal to the conscience of tech oligarchs, many of whom appear consumed by self-aggrandising visions of inevitable technological and economic advancement. If there is hope of averting the nightmare scenarios that accompany our most prominent innovations, it lies not with those building the machines, but with governments willing to regulate them and with a public prepared to insist on accountability before progress becomes truly irreversible.

www.ensemble.com.au

Review: My Fair Lady (Sydney Opera House)

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Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Sep 10 – Oct 31, 2026
Book & Lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner
Music: Frederick Loewe
Director: Karen Johnson Mortimer
Cast: Freddy Hellier, Reg Livermore, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Claire Lyon, Robyn Nevin, Nathaniel Parker, David Whitney, Anne Wood
Images by Jeff Busby

Theatre review
What remains timeless about Eliza Doolittle’s story is how readily young women, even today, continue to be seduced by promises of a more elevated existence, if only they surrender enough of themselves to become the woman patriarchy prefers. She believes that by shedding her old habits and bending herself into the shape demanded by a hegemonic society, fulfilment and success will naturally follow. It is a fantasy that has endured remarkably well.

In many ways, this decades old My Fair Lady is a story about the glass ceiling. No matter how obediently a woman submits to patriarchal expectations, she is never permitted to arrive at a place of genuine equality or satisfaction. Karen Johnson Mortimer’s direction foregrounds this reality, allowing us to feel the accumulating disappointments Eliza endures after voluntarily subjecting herself to relentless humiliation and objectification. From today’s vantage point, we recognise the truth of it: even if self-possession is possible within prevailing paradigms, submission to what others want rarely pays adequate dividends.

Claire Lyon is instrumental in making this encounter with a familiar story feel unexpectedly fresh. She gives Eliza a spine of steel without ever betraying the character as written, revealing a woman whose resilience grows alongside her refinement. Lyon’s singing and physicality are impeccable, both technically and artistically, but it is her portrayal of a woman gradually acquiring wisdom rather than polish that proves most compelling.

Nathaniel Parker has the thankless task of playing Professor Henry Higgins, a character who has only become more objectionable with the passing decades. Fortunately, Parker possesses an innate tenderness that makes Higgins just charismatic enough for us to understand, however reluctantly, why Eliza might be drawn into his orbit.

The production design is highly accomplished, if occasionally too reverential in its traditionalism. The absence of one iconic costume from the 1964 film is a disappointing omission, but Cecil Beaton’s original millinery designs and John Isaacs’ exquisite wig work lend the production an undeniable elegance and visual sophistication.

Most of us learn the hard way that patriarchy will disappoint us, no matter how completely we capitulate to its demands. Eliza may have been poor at the story’s outset, but she was never truly miserable; it is only after embarking on her transformation into a so called lady that unhappiness takes hold. She undoubtedly gains education, confidence and social mobility through Higgins’ tutelage, but her greatest reward is an enlightenment altogether different from the one she was promised. The real transformation is not in becoming a lady, but recognising the cost of trying to become someone else’s ideal.

www.myfairladythemusical.com.au

Review: Dixon & Daughters (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Sep 18 – Oct 3, 2026
Playwright: Deborah Bruce
Director: Kim Hardwick
Cast: Vanessa Downing, Rylea Eilis, Romney Hamilton, Linda Nicholls-Gidley, Danette Potgieter, Sarah Jane Starr
Images by Campbell Parsons

Theatre review
Mary has just been released from prison, and although her daughters and granddaughter are trying to restore some sense of normality, this is a household built on fractures that refuse to stay buried. Deborah Bruce’s Dixon & Daughters takes longer than necessary to arrive at its emotional centre, but once its central wound is exposed, there is no questioning the play’s urgency. Its wit is sharp and often disarming, yet it is the emotional weight of its drama that ultimately leaves the deepest impression.

Kim Hardwick’s direction is steeped in convincing naturalism. She creates a world of such lived-in authenticity that every exchange feels immediate and every relationship fully inhabited, drawing the audience into the family’s intimate dynamics before revealing the devastating force of what lies beneath. The realism never feels ornamental; it is precisely what gives the story its devastating emotional impact.

Vanessa Downing is formidable as Mary, refusing to soften the character’s abrasiveness or blunt cruelty. It is an unsparing performance that allows us to confront both the harm Mary has inflicted and the remorse she struggles to articulate. Sarah Jane Starr is equally compelling as Briana, bringing razor-sharp acerbity and infectious vitality to a woman shaped by trauma yet fiercely committed to breaking its cycle. Romney Hamilton’s Julie is quietly heartbreaking from the outset, before delivering the production’s most emotionally shattering moments when the drama reaches its fullest intensity. Linda Nicholls-Gidley lends Bernie a stoic resilience that evokes the British “keep calm and carry on” ethos, while always revealing the grief simmering beneath her composure. As the youngest generation, Danette Potgieter and Rylea Eilis bring Ella and Leigh an appealing blend of youthful innocence and surprising emotional intelligence.

Mia MacCormick’s set is equally deserving of praise. Her two-level design effortlessly accommodates the play’s shifting locations within Mary’s home, while vividly capturing the cramped material reality of England’s working class. It is an economical design rich with social detail, telling its own story about the conditions in which this family has endured.

Across three generations of women, Dixon & Daughters traces the enduring consequences of domestic violence. The patriarch is the obvious perpetrator, but Bruce is interested in something more insidious: the web of institutions, expectations and silences that enable abuse to persist and perpetrators to evade accountability. It is easy to condemn Mary for her silence and inaction. The play asks us to confront the more uncomfortable truth that her choices were shaped by a system designed to reward obedience and punish resistance under white patriarchy. To hold Mary solely responsible is to imagine, borrowing Audre Lorde’s famous formulation, that the master’s house can be dismantled with the master’s tools. Justice lies not in isolating one woman’s failure, but in exposing the structure that made it possible in the first place, and then committing to build a better replacement.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.tinydogproductions.com.au

Review: How My Light Is Spent (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Sep 11 – 26, 2026
Playwright: Alan Harris
Director: Braiden Toko
Cast: Jane Angharad, Renée Billing, Pita Lolohea, Kira McLennan, James Smithers
Images by Robert Catto

Theatre review
Jimmy is 34 and living back at home after the collapse of his marriage, having lost both his wife and daughter. He has found work at a drive-through doughnut shop, but his only genuine source of comfort is a weekly call with a phone sex operator named Kitty. Jimmy rarely speaks about his emotional turmoil, yet it is immediately apparent that he is failing to cope. As parts of his body begin to disappear from sight, Alan Harris offers a poignant allegory for a man slowly fading into oblivion.

How My Light is Spent may find Jimmy at the lowest point of his life, but rather than wallow in despair, it delights in the strange and the whimsical. Its humour is graceful and quietly inventive, maintaining an air of lightness throughout without sacrificing emotional substance. By the time it reaches its conclusion, the play has arrived somewhere unexpectedly moving, giving its eccentricity genuine purpose.

Braiden Toko’s direction wholeheartedly embraces the play’s eccentric spirit while exercising remarkable restraint. Every quirky flourish is handled with a light touch, ensuring the production never feels self-conscious or eager to charm. There is a confidence in its gentleness that becomes deeply captivating, making it a pleasure to watch a work that never insists upon its own cleverness.

That same sophistication extends to the visual design. James Smithers’ set is striking in its remarkably polished execution of simple ideas, creating a world that feels playful without becoming overly decorative. Clare Sheridan’s lighting and Anthony MacDermott’s score are similarly understated, bringing warmth and sensuality with precision and sensitivity. Together they create a theatrical language that is quietly magical, without having to tip into excess.

Smithers also delivers a beautifully judged performance as Jimmy, bringing an essential innocence that makes the character immediately sympathetic. His greatest strength lies in his lightness of touch; by refusing to foreground Jimmy’s suffering, he allows the pain to emerge naturally and all the more powerfully. Jane Angharad gives Kitty an affecting realism, sidestepping the familiar clichés associated with sex workers to create someone grounded, compassionate and entirely believable. Supporting performances from Renée Billing, Pita Lolohea and Kira McLennan provide the production with much of its buoyancy, the trio bringing charisma and creativity, while sustaining the show’s distinctive sense of style.

The beauty of whimsy is its ability to make familiar truths feel newly discovered. By embracing unpredictability, it pushes language, perspective and convention into unexpected places, inviting us to see ordinary experiences through different lenses. Human beings possess boundless imagination, yet so much of adult life demands rigidity, routine and predictability. When confronted with life’s challenges, we often find ourselves repeating the same futile patterns, endlessly beating dead horses. In valuing whimsy, we may find a kind of salvation, beginning with the courage to think, feel and imagine differently.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.secrethouse.com.au

Review: Housework (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Sep 5 – Oct 17, 2026
Playwright: Emily Steel
Director: Shannon Rush
Cast: Laurence Boxhall, Franca Lafosse, Indira Naidoo, Johnny Nasser, Emily Taheny, Susie Youssef
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
Emily Steel’s Housework tells the story of the Australian federal government, or more precisely, the messy machinery that keeps our democracy running. Staffers of every rank, members of parliament, frontbench ministers and even the occupant of the nation’s highest office populate its world. Each understands the gravity of their responsibilities and the far-reaching consequences of their decisions, yet none manages to navigate the system with complete dignity or unimpeachable integrity.

Some argue that the system is broken; others contend it was always built to accommodate corruption. Housework is less interested in resolving that debate than in exposing just how pervasive the compromises and backroom dealings have become. Like the proverbial sausage, the business of government is something we would rather not watch being made.

Steel’s play is at its most compelling when it invites us to sit with uncomfortable ethical ambiguities. The plot itself is admittedly predictable, but the questions it raises are anything but simple. Its structure can feel overly straightforward, and its comedy occasionally too restrained, yet Shannon Rush’s direction ensures the production never loses momentum. The pacing is buoyant, the energy infectious, and we remain eager to discover what fresh moral compromise awaits around each corner.

Emily Taheny anchors the production with admirable conviction and clarity as chief of staff Anna, finding a balance between farce and emotional credibility that gives the play its centre of gravity. Susie Youssef brings impeccable comic timing to Ruth, although the character could benefit from greater psychological accuracy. Franca Lafosse is thoroughly enjoyable as the relentlessly upbeat junior staffer Kelly, even if the writing saddles her with an implausible, and irritating, level of naivety. Johnny Nasser is outstanding as Paul, capturing the character’s constant oscillation between decency and opportunism with remarkable nuance.

Ailsa Paterson’s set convincingly evokes the imposing architecture of Australia’s colonial-era government institutions, embodying both their grandeur and their emotional coldness. It is an apt visual metaphor for the bureaucratic culture the play interrogates. At times, however, the performance space feels too expansive for scenes set in supposedly clandestine rooms, and several lengthy exits tip into unintended comedy.

Housework excels at illuminating the flaws embedded within our political system and, by extension, the ways those flaws ripple into everyday Australian life. It offers no easy remedies, nor does it pretend reform is simple. Instead, it insists that honest scrutiny is a necessary first step. Democracy, the play suggests, is sustained not by believing our institutions are clean, but by refusing to look away when they are not.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au | www.statetheatrecompany.com.au

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