Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), May 15 – 23, 2026
Book & Lyrics: Riki Lindsey
Music: Mitchell Sloan
Director: Alexander Berlage
Cast: Riki Lindsey
Images by Jessie Obialor

Theatre review
Romeo wrestles with existence and desire alike; as a gay Māori man, he must continually authenticate himself—to his community, and to his own fractured sense of self—demanding recognition of his validity and worth. Sonder, a sixty-minute solo musical, renders this pilgrimage toward wholeness in lyrical, densely autobiographical terms. Conceived by Riki Lindsey, who authors both book and lyrics, the work situates its protagonist at the volatile crossroads of multiple prejudices, tracing an arc of empowerment that culminates in his reclamation of warrior rituals and the Indigenous martial discipline of Mau Rākau.

There is, undeniably, an authentic emotional core here; Lindsey draws from lived experience with an integrity that prevents the material from ever feeling false. Yet truthfulness and dramatic sophistication are not synonymous. While the revelations possess genuine depth, their articulation remains disappointingly uncomplicated—descriptions that tread familiar ground without excavating further, a narrative voice that too often settles for the pedestrian rather than the piercing. The piece knows what it wishes to say, but not always how to bring complexity or inspiration to what it is saying.

Mitchell Sloan’s score compounds this predicament. His electronic compositions pulse with an urgent, driving rhythm, yet that propulsiveness rarely penetrates beneath the surface. The music gestures at intensity without achieving intimacy; it keeps us alert but never truly implicated, underscoring the obvious rather than illuminating the obscured.

Visually, Alexander Berlage—who also assumes duties as set and lighting designer—constructs an arresting world. Taking his conceit from the image of a shattered mirror, he erects towering shards of reflective metallica that ascend and descend with choreographic precision, functioning at times as surrogate ensemble. The effect is undeniably ravishing, but ravishment is not the same as communion. Over the hour, the gleaming surfaces begin to feel less like an invitation and more like a barrier; the atmosphere grows chilly, and we find ourselves drifting from the narrative orbit, admiring the architecture while our emotional engagement steadily atrophies.

As performer, Lindsey carries the entire edifice with a gravity that occasionally buckles under its own weight. The work’s absolute renunciation of humour, its unrelenting earnestness, risks transfiguring a story of self-possession into something resembling self-absorption. Without tonal modulation, the struggle for authenticity begins to feel hermetically sealed, a private ordeal displayed rather than a shared crisis opened to the audience.

Sonder bathes itself in luminous beauty, yet that very radiance seems designed to dazzle rather than disclose. We remain outsiders, permitted to observe, even to marvel, but never to enter. Curiosity is kindled; emotional investment is not.

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