Tag Archives: comedy

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: 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: 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: Singapore Spotlight (Sydney Fringe Festival)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Sep 1 – 5, 2026

The Happier Place
Creator and performer: Jo Tan

Pretty Ugly
Creator and performer: Theo Chen

Theatre review
In The Happier Place, creator-performer Jo Tan inhabits Val, a radio DJ broadcasting from some distant, post-catastrophic future where the populace lives in perpetual dread of “dematerialisation.” On air, Val erupts into hysterical laughter and dispenses an endless torrent of absurdist humour, as though the act of denial itself were the last available bulwark against annihilation. The performance raises an unsettling proposition: that the fortitude required to confront unrelenting horror may be a virtue more honoured in the abstract than actually possessed. Through this lens, Tan’s work interrogates an array of pressing social concerns, including the climate crisis, censorship, mental health, each rendered with the gravity they merit.

Pretty Ugly, by contrast, offers creator Theo Chen centre stage, where he interpolates standards from the musical theatre canon with meditations on romantic failure and the labyrinthine agonies of self-image. The piece traces the insidious alchemy by which feeling unloved transmutes into the conviction of being unlovable; Chen’s pursuit of catharsis through performance proves as intellectually rigorous as it is emotionally disarming. His exploration of queerness is distinctly situated: that of a Gen Z Singaporean equipped with an expansive, theoretically informed understanding of gender and sexuality, yet nevertheless navigating a society whose conservatism remains stubbornly, even aggressively, queerphobic.

As performers, Tan and Chen could scarcely be more dissimilar. Tan is relentless, muscular, tightly bound to the architecture of her script; Chen is elegiac, meandering, orbiting a loosely sketched narrative rather than adhering to one. Yet what unites them, beyond the sheer magnetism of their respective presences, is an unwavering fidelity to honesty. Whether their material is invented or confessional, naturalistic or operatically heightened, both works seem to arrive at an identical terminus: that zone of consciousness where evasion is no longer tenable, and where the only remaining option is to look, however unbearable the sight.

www.singaporespotlight.com

Review: How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (Hayes Theatre)

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Venue: Hayes Theatre Co (Potts Point NSW), Aug 28 – Sep 27, 2026
Book: Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock, Willie Gilbert
Music and Lyrics: Frank Loesser
Director: Cameron Mitchell
Cast: Simon Burke, Kaeng Chan, Taye Grant, Katie Green, Kye Hall, Wayne Scott Kermond, Georgia Laga’aia, Lucy Lalor, Max Macdonald, Noni McCallum, Kristina McNamara, Madeline Pratt, Jake Speer, Stacey Thomsett, Zachary Webster
Images by John McRae

Theatre review
A window washer stumbles upon a manual that promises to teach any man how to game the system and ascend the corporate hierarchy without the burden of genuine effort. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying may be well into its seventh decade, yet its dissection of capitalism (particularly its hollow mythology of merit and fairness) remains disquietingly pertinent.

What has not weathered the years, however, is its treatment of women: every female character is rendered as woefully subservient, stripped of agency, and reduced to cardboard cut-outs wholly objectified through the lens of 1950s masculinity. It is regrettable that director and choreographer Cameron Mitchell makes no discernible attempt to restore dignity to these roles; nevertheless, the tautness and precision of his staging deliver a production that is, for all its antiquated sensibilities, undeniably and irresistibly enjoyable. The vigour and momentum of the direction prove thoroughly engaging, as does the overall sheen of the presentation – an accomplishment owed in no small measure to its design team.

Dominic Foffani’s set achieves striking stylistic fidelity, offering a grand and officious vision of the era’s aspirational workplaces. Christine Mutton’s costumes delight with their judiciously balanced and vibrant palette, each garment meticulously tailored to present every performer at their most flattering. Peter Rubie’s lighting is finely attuned to the production’s comedic register, yet seizes every opportunity to conjure moments of genuine beauty whenever the score drifts into more poetic territory.

Jake Speer proves a leading man of considerable precision and detail, bringing formidable technical skill and commanding self-assurance to the role of Finch. As his romantic interest Rosemary, Georgia Laga’aia sings with exquisite beauty, and is fortunately granted several substantial musical numbers that showcase her considerable vocal gifts, even if the character herself remains stubbornly uninspiring. The ensemble is immensely likeable, and the production lingers in the memory for its many sequences in which the company’s infectious dynamism and polished cohesion testify to an admirable dedication in the rehearsal room. Kim Gilbert’s musical direction is a thorough pleasure, brimming with jaunty rhythms that sustain the audience’s delight throughout.

Much of what How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying asserts still rings true. Deceit and obfuscation remain entrenched in the structures that govern our social and economic existence; yet while the narrative exposes this reality with clarity, it appears to advocate not for resistance or reform, but for the cynical strategy of aligning oneself with those who wield power unscrupulously. More than seventy years have elapsed since Shepherd Mead’s original novel, and the corrosive effects of the corruption he described have not merely persisted—they have metastasised, inflicting ever greater harm upon the lives of ordinary people.

www.hayestheatre.com.au | www.lpdprod.com

Review: The Shark Is Broken (Foundry Theatre)

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Venue: Foundry Theatre (Pyrmont NSW), Aug 28 – Oct 11, 2026
Playwrights: Joseph Nixon, Ian Shaw
Director: Luke Joslin
Cast: Robin Goldsworthy, Anthony Gooley, Tom Stokes
Images by David Hooley

Theatre review
Protracted technical failures on the set of a Hollywood blockbuster have a curious way of forging intimacy among those marooned by circumstance. Such was the predicament in 1975 on the set of Jaws, where three principal actors found themselves with an abundance of time and a poverty of purpose. In The Shark is Broken, by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon, we observe these men—united by profession yet scarcely by disclosure—navigate the liminal space between collegiality and confession.

Directed by Luke Joslin, the production captures the texture of masculine camaraderie with undeniable authenticity; the performers bristle, bond, and deflect with the choreography of men who have learned that proximity need not entail revelation. Yet the play remains curiously surface-bound: its characters traffic in the signifiers of vulnerability without ever submitting to its discomfort. One admires the execution while wondering for whom, precisely, this exercise in emotional restraint is intended.

The cast is uniformly superb. Robin Goldsworthy brings an irrepressible, mercurial energy to Richard Dreyfuss, his vivacity keeping the proceedings buoyant even as the narrative threatens to list. Anthony Gooley imbues Robert Shaw with a brooding, caustic grandeur—convincingly sodden one moment, debonair the next, capturing the paradox of the ruined aesthete. Tom Stokes is a dead ringer for Roy Scheider, his impeccable timing lending the storytelling an organic, unforced rhythm.

The design elements are equally accomplished. James Browne’s set, augmented by Cameron Smith’s video projections, achieves a striking majesty while never permitting us to forget that these men are, both literally and figuratively, at sea. Jasmine Rizk’s lighting and Sean Peter’s sound design offer subtle but essential flourishes, conjuring theatricality from an environment that is simultaneously artificial and elemental.

The central irony of the piece—and perhaps its most trenchant observation—is that these men had no faith their film would become anything more than a troubled production. They did not relish their position; they did not apprehend the extraordinary privilege of their circumstance. Instead, they nursed petty grievances and private miseries, too consumed by their own discontent to recognize the historical moment unfolding around them. The play seems to ask whether lasting legacies are forged through conscious intention or merely accrue, unbidden, to those too preoccupied to notice. It is a sobering meditation on the cost of myopia—though one wishes the work itself were less reluctant to look beneath the surface it so reticently surveys.

www.sharkisbroken.com.au

Review: The Book Of Everything (Belvoir St Theatre)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Aug 22 – Sep 20, 2026
Playwright: Richard Tulloch (from the novel by Guus Kuijer)
Director: Neil Armfield
Cast: Julie Forsyth, John Gaden, Claire Jones, John Leary, Rebecca Massey, Bridie McKim, Pamela Rabe, Matthew Whittet
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
Nine-year-old Thomas lives in the shadow of a tyrannical father whose religious fanaticism manifests as routine violence against his wife and children. Next door lives a witch who appears to stand in direct opposition to everything the Christian church represents, yet she is the one who offers Thomas the greatest comfort and inspiration. Guus Kuijer’s The Book of Everything is a story with a profound moral centre, and Richard Tulloch’s stage adaptation captures that depth while remaining irresistibly joyful, funny and ultimately uplifting.

Neil Armfield’s direction brims with effervescence. Whether the production is boisterous or intimate, it is consistently moving, finding genuine emotional truth without ever tipping into sentimentality. The Book of Everything is about childhood innocence, but its reflections on growing up feel timeless rather than saccharine.

Much of that success rests on Matthew Whittet’s extraordinary performance as Thomas. He plays the boy with boundless energy and infectious delight, yet every burst of exuberance feels completely sincere. His portrayal is so emotionally open that we become wholly invested in Thomas and instinctively share both his fears and his hopes.

Julie Forsyth is equally captivating as Mrs Van Amersfoort. She brings effortless charisma and warmth to the role, making it easy to understand why Thomas is drawn to her. The tenderness of their evolving friendship becomes the emotional heart of the production.

Throughout, live music by Jack Ward underscores the action with remarkable sensitivity. He calibrates every shift in tone with surgical precision, guiding the audience seamlessly from moments of gravity and introspection to scenes of childlike playfulness. His score gives the production a magical sheen that invites younger audiences into Thomas’s imagination while reminding older ones how to reconnect with their own sense of wonder.

Kim Carpenter’s set design is built around the seemingly simple concept of an oversized book unfolding into each new scene. What could have felt obvious instead becomes wonderfully effective, framing the story within a world of innocence and possibility. Against that backdrop, the narrative’s darkest ideas about faith and fanaticism become even more confronting. Nigel Levings’ lighting is not especially showy, but it is meticulously judged, creating atmosphere with precision and maintaining beautiful visual balance throughout.

The Book of Everything ends on a note of hope, though Thomas’s future remains unwritten. Having witnessed the damage wrought by his brutal father, one might easily imagine him repeating that cycle of harm. Yet we have also seen the redemptive influence of Mrs Van Amersfoort, and the possibility that Thomas might forge a better path. More crucially, perhaps, the play reminds us that becoming one’s own person means the freedom to choose at every turn—and that the courage to choose wisely is the truest measure of character.

www.belvoir.com.au

Review: The Boys Are Kissing (Qtopia)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Aug 12 – 29, 2026
Playwright: Zak Zarafshan
Director: Gavin Roach
Cast: Aisling Delahunt, Max Fernandez, Sonya Kerr, Willa King, John Michael Narres, Shab Tavakol
Images by Robert Catto

Theatre review
Amira and Chloe have fled London in search of breathing room, trading cramped city living for a house with a garden where their nine-year-old might roam. The trade-off, as they discover, is steep: the regional school gates prove far less hospitable than the cosmopolitan playgrounds they left behind. As an interracial lesbian couple, they increasingly find themselves at odds with other parents, a tension that Zak Zarafshan mines to brilliant effect in The Boys are Kissing, conjuring moments that veer from the absurdly comic to the quietly devastating. It is a play that feels genuinely of the post-marriage-equality moment: intellectually grounded without being preachy, its moral architecture sturdy enough to propel the narrative yet never so heavy that it drags the storytelling under.

Director Gavin Roach approaches the material with an admirable vigour, infusing the production with an urgency that reminds us queer rights remain a fight rather than a fait accompli. Yet the execution never quite matches the intention, with the production itself lacking the crispness necessary to draw us fully into the story. The cast often appears under-rehearsed, and while there are moments of genuine theatrical delight, their connections to both character and narrative lack sufficient depth. This diminishes not only the gravity of the material, but also the sense of joy and possibility that ultimately lies at its heart.

Raphael Gennusa’s lighting design brings welcome variation and texture to the atmosphere, although some scenes requiring more substantial shifts in location are not transformed quite convincingly enough. Akesiu Poitaha, meanwhile, deserves commendation for an extensive sound design that effectively transports the action beyond the mundane into spaces that feel altogether more evocative.

As queer people, we have long carried the responsibility of making life more bearable for generations of queer people yet to come. Now that it is increasingly common for us to have biological children of our own, the question of what we leave behind—and the kind of world our children will inherit—feels more consequential than ever. Yet the method by which we pursue that legacy need not change dramatically. We need only hold fast to the same principle that has always served us: the simple, unwavering demand for equality.

www.qtopiasydney.com.au | www.instagram.com/a_hello_darling_production

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: 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