Tag Archives: drama

Review: Afterglow (Eternity Playhouse)

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Venue: Eternity Playhouse (Darlinghurst NSW), Feb 26 – Mar 22, 2026
Playwright: S. Asher Gelman
Director: S. Asher Gelman
Cast: Julian Curtis, Matthew Mitcham, Matthey Predny
Images by Cameron Grant, Parenthesy

Theatre review
In S. Asher Gelman’s Afterglow, the familiar architecture of the ménage-à-trois serves as the unstable foundation for a drama about the limits of non-monogamy. When the married couple, Josh and Alex, invite Darius into their bed, the arrangement predictably unravels, not from jealousy, but from a more transgressive breach of contract: the development of genuine, “forbidden” emotion. While the play’s narrative arc is undeniably conventional, its very simplicity throws into sharp relief a rarer cultural conversation. It examines the particular anxieties that surface when gay men, having embraced the ostensibly stable structures of marriage and domesticity, find themselves haunted by the very bourgeois values they have adopted, revealing the potential for anguish when liberation is measured against a heteronormative template.

Originally staged by Gelman in 2017, the production shows only faint traces of its vintage. Ann Beyersdorfer’s scenic design impresses less through bold aesthetic choices than through its architectural fluidity, reshaping itself to the narrative’s spatial demands with a necessary pragmatism. Jamie Roderick’s lighting bathes the stage in a high-gloss, almost cinematic glamour, yet this polish proves a double-edged sword; the illumination frequently spills into the house, breaching the fourth wall in a manner that diffuses focus rather than deepening immersion. Between scenes, Alex Mackyol’s sound design becomes most discernible, its sonic cues evoking a distinctly late-aughts gay sensibility—a period detail that now situates the action in a specific, if recent, cultural moment.

The three-member cast commits fully to material that offers them little shelter. As married couple Alex and Josh, Julian Curtis and Matthew Mitcham channel genuine intensity into the domestic rupture at the play’s core, their performances lending weight to a script that often lacks it. Matthew Predny, as Darius, locates something rarer still: a vein of authentic vulnerability that cuts against the work’s prevailing surface performativity, hinting at the more grounded drama that might have been.

The casting of three white men in this Afterglow is not a neutral choice but a necessary one. It is what permits the play its studied obliviousness, its serene detachment from the sociopolitical currents that continue to churn beyond the bedroom door. Marriage equality was never an ending, only a waypoint—a fact underscored daily by resurgent homophobic violence in Australia and the fascistic lurch of American politics. To present queer domesticity as a closed loop, untroubled by the world outside, is to mistake a fragile foothold for a permanent perch. The afterglow is real. It is also, for many, already fading.

www.afterglowplay.com

Review: The Elocution Of Benjamin Franklin (Griffin Theatre Co)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Feb 21 – Mar 29, 2026
Playwright: steve j. spears
Director: Declan Greene
Cast: Simon Burke AO
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
Robert O’Brien leads a life of deliberate seclusion, his world contained within the walls of his home where he devotes himself to the exacting art of vocal pedagogy, instructing pupils across the full spectrum of age and aspiration. The equilibrium of this carefully calibrated existence is disrupted when Benjamin—a twelve-year-old of startling precocity and unsettling sophistication—arrives to reveal himself as nothing short of prodigious. This narrative unfolds in the early 1970s, an era of terrifying peril for all who share Robert’s sexual orientation; even his most careful navigation of social propriety cannot insulate him from the devastating ease with which circumstance may turn into accusation, suspicion into ruin.

Half a century has elapsed since steve j. spears’ The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin inaugurated its world premiere upon the Sydney stage, and while the landscape of queer liberation has undergone transformation beyond measure, the play’s explorations of intolerance, prejudice, and bigotry remain as piercingly relevant as ever—a testament to the uncomfortable truth that while laws may evolve, the fundamental human capacity for cruelty and hate often endures.

Under Declan Greene’s direction, the production carries an unmistakable reverence—a profound acknowledgment of a generation for whom queerness meant navigating a world far more hostile than today’s youth might readily comprehend. The work functions, quite clearly, as homage to those forebears and elders who charted paths through terrain that could, at any moment, turn treacherous. Yet the production never settles into mere period tribute; it remains astutely attuned to the present, using its historical lens to examine the seemingly cyclical nature of persecution and the ease with which any minority can become scapegoat du jour. The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin ultimately wields considerable power in its address, even as its dramatic traction proves somewhat uneven—with individual scenes varying in their capacity to compel as the narrative unfolds.

Isabel Hudson’s production design conjures a genteel nostalgia—an aesthetic meditation upon queer history that attends with equal sensitivity to the elegiac allure being manufactured and to the precariousness underlying its surface. Lights by Brockman prove instrumental in choreographing our temporal passage, whether languorous or abrupt; its mercurial unpredictability generates a distinctly satisfying theatrical frisson. Working in intimate concert, David Bergman’s sound and music prove equally indispensable, enabling the production’s transcendence of material realities to reach the essential core of its thematic concerns.

Simon Burke AO delivers a performance of remarkable depth and emotional acuity in his portrayal of Robert. Whether navigating registers of flippant vivacity or mortal gravity, he maintains a presence at once reassuring and undeniably sincere—radiating a warmth that secures our attentive vulnerability, rendering us receptive to the excavation of a queer historical epoch that demands our permanent remembrance.

Just when one might have reasonably supposed our community could begin to shift its focus from old battles to new horizons, these last forty-eight hours have delivered via the news, harrowing accounts of violence against young gay men—assaults whose contours bear chilling resemblance to those that recurred with grim regularity before decriminalisation, before marriage equality, before any number of legislative milestones we imagined might signal lasting change.

It is clear that legal frameworks, however essential, cannot alone dismantle the deeper machinations of prejudice. The same streets that witnessed violence decades ago continue to witness it still; the same fear that coursed through gay men navigating public space in the previous century courses through their counterparts today. Progress, for all its genuine achievements, does not move in an unbroken forward trajectory. It stalls, it falters, and sometimes it reveals itself to be far more fragile than we wish to believe. Hate crimes against queer people are not anachronisms—they are the present, demanding we reckon with how much remains undone.

www.griffintheatre.com.au 

Review: Gravy (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Feb 18 – 28, 2026
Playwright: Gemma Burwell
Director: Saša Ljubović
Cast: Meg Hyeronimus, Deborah Jones
Images by Abraham de Souza

Theatre review
Confined within the oppressive intimacy of close quarters, mother and daughter find themselves separated by little more than the porcelain curve of a bathtub. It is within this suffocating proximity that their shared claustrophobia becomes the crucible for an outpouring of anguish, regret, and disillusionment—at once accusatory and raw with frustration. Gemma Burwell’s Gravy eschews narrative transparency for formal abstraction; yet the emotional architecture it constructs is undeniably vast, audacious, and hypnotic. Burwell’s dramaturgy serves as a potent reminder that theatre must transcend mere intellectual provocation—that it bears equal obligation to the unruly territories of heart and soul.

Under the direction of Saša Ljubović, the production seizes upon the surreality latent in Burwell’s text and takes flight—soaring into a theatrical realm at once mesmerising and palpably risky. Coherence is deliberately destabilised; we are never quite certain what is unfolding, as the possibilities for interpretation remain deliberately, thrillingly multiple. Yet paradoxically, we sense that the action coheres, if chiefly in ways that bypass the rational mind and speak directly to the viscera. That the stage appears perpetually inundated—water surging, defying containment—renders the proceedings irreducibly unpredictable, importing nature’s own recalcitrance into the theatrical equation. Here, theatre claims a latitude of freedom all too absent from Western dramaturgical convention. James Smithers’s set design accomplishes this not merely with efficacy, but with consummate sophistication and polish.

Indeed, this production foregrounds aesthetics as a primary vehicle for meaning-making and a site of value in itself. Gravy is incontrovertibly macabre, yet equally evocative, inspiriting, and possessed of a terrible beauty. Frankie Clarke’s lighting design oscillates between the dreamlike and the nightmarish, determined to never settle into the merely pedestrian; it is a study in luminous instability. Meanwhile, sound design by Milo McLaughlin and Zsa Zsa proves thrilling in its capacity to conjure atmospheres at once enigmatic and menacing. What impresses most, however, is the intricacy and precision with which the sonic landscape intertwines with the physicality unfolding in live motion—each gesture met, mirrored, or subverted by an aural counterpart, resulting in a synthesis that feels both elemental and meticulously wrought.

Performers Meg Hyeronimus and Deborah Jones inhabit their roles with remarkable concentration and an intimate fluency in the play’s internal logic. Their interpretations abound in imaginative daring and a studied carefreeness that invites—indeed compels—each spectator to forge perspectives irreducibly singular. Their bodies repudiate realism, with physical vocabularies that unfold as a kind of choreographed dialogue: a dance that speaks with potent ambiguity, shifting between brutality and sensitivity. In their hands, archetypal relationships and perennial emotional conflicts are rendered with a freshness that feels wonderfully modern.

The parent-offspring dyad constitutes an inexhaustible wellspring of narrative, yet it is through art that such perennial tales are rendered strange, defamiliarised, and thus perpetually renewed—yielding uncharted resonances for as long as art endures.

Review: Es & Flo (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Feb 13 – 28, 2026
Playwright: Jennifer Lunn
Director: Emma Canalese
Cast: Annie Byron, Eloise Snape, Fay Du Chateau, Erika Ndibe, Charlotte Salusinszky
Images by Robert Catto

Theatre review
Esme has turned seventy-one, and the encroachment of dementia is becoming unmistakable. Her de facto partner of thirty-six years, Flo, remains steadfast in her commitment to care for Esme at home. Yet Esme’s son, asserting familial authority, is equally resolved to relocate her to an aged care facility. In Es & Flo, Jennifer Lunn examines a predicament all too familiar to many same-sex couples of a certain generation: the systematic erasure of their relationships by both kin and legal institutions, stripping them of companionship and patrimony precisely when bodily decline renders them most vulnerable.

It is a deeply affecting work, one that, under Emma Canalese’s astute direction, strikes precisely the right register to resonate with its audience, delivering a theatrical experience at once moving and meaningful. Annie Byron is particularly compelling as Esme, capturing with remarkable subtlety the complex metamorphoses that accompany the advance of age. Her portrayal of authentic tenderness toward her partner does much to render their bond credible, thereby securing the audience’s emotional investment in the narrative. Fay Du Chateau’s Flo truly comes into her own as the drama intensifies, revealing layers of fortitude and vulnerability. The supporting ensemble—Eloise Snape, Erika Ndibe, and Charlotte Salusinszky—likewise distinguishes itself, bringing thoughtfulness and nuance to every moment.

Soham Apte’s set design evokes a recognisable domestic sphere even as its spatial demarcations permit scenes to unfold with fluidity. Alice Vance’s costuming conjures persuasive archetypes while conferring upon the stage a distinct, understated elegance. Luna Ng’s lighting, though never ostentatious, illuminates each interaction with precision, calibrated to elicit the requisite emotional response from an audience confronting a narrative at once tender and consequential.

The love between the two elders in Es & Flo is rendered as indissoluble, yet even now such unions remain perpetually imperilled. Statutory equality and the legal recognition of same-sex marriage have not extinguished the social dynamics capable of sundering these bonds—particularly when queer individuals advance into infirmity and can no longer safeguard their own interests. Equality on paper is but a parchment promise unless the circle of kinship closes around us, unless the community becomes armour against the gathering dark of our final queer years.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.mitodoproductions.com

Review: Gia Ophelia (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Feb 11 – 15, 2026
Playwright: Grace Wilson
Director: Jo Bradley
Cast: Annie Stafford
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
Gia is desperate to play Ophelia in Hamlet at Sydney’s premier Shakespeare company, yet at twenty-nine she confronts the dawning realisation that this ambition will likely remain unfulfilled. At home, her boyfriend Dan pressures her toward motherhood, rendering their relationship increasingly transactional. In Grace Wilson’s Gia Ophelia, we witness an actor gradually overwhelmed, drowning in disappointment and sorrow—much like the role she covets most.

Wilson’s dramaturgy emerges as the earnest offspring of Shakespearean inspiration, whilst simultaneously offering a laceratingly frank excavation of a young woman’s interiority in the contemporary West. Though punctuated by humour, Gia Ophelia proves ultimately disquieting—almost exasperating in its steadfast adherence to a conception of femininity four centuries old, its refusal to grant Gia the autonomy and agency that her modern circumstances ostensibly afford her.

Direction by Jo Bradley proves steadfastly faithful to the spirit of the text, ensuring that the anguish rendered resonates palpably—an unflinching examination of one woman’s conviction of her own failure. Holly Nesbitt’s lighting design confers a superb sense of theatricality, suffusing the stage with wistfulness and melancholy, discovering moments of unexpected beauty in the protagonist’s struggle-worn expressions. Otto Zagala’s sound and music, though occasionally abrupt in their intrusion, are effective additions to the production’s atmospheric intensity.

Annie Stafford delivers a remarkable performance as Gia, navigating with apparent effortlessness from the play’s levities to its despondent core. Whether in moments of lightness or shadow, Stafford proves eminently compelling—quite miraculously preventing the prevailing sadness of Gia Ophelia from estranging its audience.

One might hope that in this modern age, a woman like Gia could locate peace, happiness, and fulfilment beyond the purview of masculine design. Yet the long shadow of hegemonic patriarchy persists, its ancient architecture still shaping the contours of our lives. This is not to suggest, however, that Gia exists merely as its creature. Women have indeed traversed remarkable distance, and the legacy of her forebears has bestowed possibilities of liberation that Shakespeare and his ilk could scarcely have imagined. The past bequeaths its constraints; it also bestows its momentum.

Review: The Normal Heart (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Feb 9 – Mar 14, 2026
Playwright: Larry Kramer
Director: Dean Bryant
Cast: Nicholas Brown, Mitchell Butel, Tim Draxl, Michael Griffiths, Emma Jones, Evan Lever, Keiynan Lonsdale, Fraser Morrison, Mark Saturno
Images by Neil Bennett

Theatre review
The story begins in 1981, at the very dawn of the AIDS crisis that would devastate gay communities around the world. As a marginalised group, attempts to secure recognition and support proved extraordinarily difficult. Yet the indefatigable activist Ned Weeks refuses to accept indifference or rejection, as vividly portrayed in Larry Kramer’s seminal work, The Normal Heart.

Written four decades ago and drawing heavily on Kramer’s own experiences, the play arrives from a vastly different social and medical landscape. Encouragingly, much has changed — not only in the treatment and understanding of the disease itself, but also in the broader recognition of gay rights. As a result, the work can at times feel overtly expositional to contemporary audiences. However, as a historical lens on one of the most defining public health and social crises of modern life, it remains deeply significant, even if not always uniformly resonant.

Dean Bryant’s direction delivers a production of fitting urgency, capturing the emotional temperature of the era and offering a clear sense of what it meant to work on the front lines of the fight for HIV and AIDS to be taken seriously. It is a passionate and deeply sincere staging, imbued with a palpable sense of commitment, even if it does not always sustain meaningful engagement.

The cast is led by Mitchell Butel, who brings admirable presence and authenticity to the role of Weeks, grounding a story that continues to demand retelling. Powerful monologues are delivered with memorable force by performers such as Emma Jones, Tim Draxl, and Evan Lever, each contributing striking moments of dramatic intensity.

Production designer Jeremy Allen underscores the desperation of the era with a set that appears subtly worn and frayed at the edges, quietly reflecting a world under strain. His costumes evoke the textures of early-1980s gay culture, with characters embodying the archetypal looks and sensibilities we now associate with that period.

Nigel Levings’ lighting is largely unobtrusive, allowing the performances to remain the focal point, before gently asserting itself in key moments — particularly towards the conclusion — when a more overt sentimentality emerges. Cellist Rowena Macneish provides live accompaniment of extraordinary sensitivity, her playing elegantly underscoring the production’s most powerful emotional currents.

While antiretroviral therapies have transformed HIV/AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition, The Normal Heart endures as an indictment of institutional indifference—a reminder that political structures remain perilously susceptible to abandoning their most vulnerable constituents. We entrust governing bodies with the intricate machinery of public welfare, yet those who wield power frequently subordinate communal wellbeing to private interests, ideological rigidity, or bureaucratic inertia. The disquieting symmetry between Kramer’s era and our own is difficult to ignore: in Sydney mere days ago, state violence was deployed against citizens exercising their right to dissent, while across the Pacific, democratic institutions in the United States appear to be unravelling with vertiginous momentum. Larry Kramer waged his battles until his final breath; his unyielding moral clarity demands not our nostalgia, but our emulation.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: Purpose (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Wharf 1 Sydney Theatre Company (Walsh Bay NSW), Feb 2 – Mar 22, 2026
Playwright: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Director: Zindzi Okenyo
Cast: Grace Bentley-Tsibuah, Deni Gordon, Markus Hamilton, Tinashe Mangwana, Maurice Marvel Meredith, Sisi Stringer
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
The Jaspers of Chicago are a prominent family, with patriarch Solomon having left an indelible mark on American history as a luminary of the Civil Rights movement and a pillar of his community, counting Dr Martin Luther King Jr. among his many friends. Yet, at some point, things began to unravel.

In Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose, we witness how a legacy can be tarnished, in a story that explores broken dreams, misplaced faith, and the quiet dangers of human complacency. As we discover that the Jaspers are not who they are believed to be, we are confronted with the illusory nature of celebrity and reputation, and reminded that true democratic agency — and personal destiny — ultimately demands individual vigilance and control.

It is a sensational piece of writing, rich with humour and sharp insight, and driven by a plot that is thrillingly unpredictable. Zindzi Okenyo’s direction keeps the audience riveted as each dramatic surprise unfolds with sustained force. Under her guidance, the relationships feel fully realised and believable, allowing us to invest deeply in the complex dynamics at play.

The cast is broadly likeable, if somewhat uneven, with Markus Hamilton leaving the strongest impression, delivering a mesmerisingly profound performance as Solomon. His daughter-in-law Morgan is brought to life by a remarkable Grace Bentley-Tsibuah, who is magnificent in her intensity, inhabiting a role brimming with resentment, rage, and defiance.

Production design by Jeremy Allen creates a Jasper residence that feels suitably traditional and respectable, its windows looking out onto heavy, persistent snowfall that quietly reinforces the play’s sense of place. Lighting by Kelsey Lee shifts in subtle gradations to mirror changes in mood, while consistently flattering and revealing the nuances of each character.

James Peter Brown’s score enters sparingly, transporting us into something more ethereal between the very grounded disputes that form the scintillating emotional core of Purpose. The effect is to create moments of distance and reflection, as though inviting us to consider these deeply human interactions with greater objectivity.

It is natural to have political heroes, but they should serve as sources of inspiration rather than saintly figures upon whom we pin all our hopes and dreams. Solomon may have achieved a great deal in his lifetime, yet we must remember that political projects are never truly complete; they are ongoing, unfinished, and constantly contested.

The systems in which we operate are often made to feel beyond our control, with power appearing distant and elusive. In truth, these structures are bendable and mutable, if only we push harder to exercise our democratic rights and restore faith in the power of collective action — especially in an age marked by the rise of reprehensible authoritarianism and heinous oligarchic influence.

Review: Amplified (Belvoir St Theatre)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Jan 29 – Feb 8, 2026
Playwright: Sheridan Harbridge
Director: Sarah Goodes
Cast: Sheridan Harbridge
Images by Jade Ellis

Theatre review
There have been few Australian women in the public eye whose rebelliousness has been openly celebrated, and Divinyls frontwoman Chrissy Amphlett remains the most indelible of them. Confrontational, anarchic and unapologetically wild, her on- and off-stage antics are rightly legendary, embodying a form of feminism that is still too easily dismissed as unpalatable. Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett, written by Sheridan Harbridge, insists that Amphlett be properly revered and memorialised. A biographical work woven through with many of the Divinyls’ greatest hits, Amplified is a tribute that is both accessible and surprising, effortlessly engaging while finding inventive ways to honour the life and legacy of a woman who refused convention at every turn. In Harbridge’s creation, we rediscover an Amphlett who continues to expose how little space Australia truly allows its women to misbehave.

As performer, Harbridge is faultless, deftly balancing our desire for a theatrical invocation of the icon’s essence with the grounded authority of a narrator whose warmth and enthusiasm we willingly surrender to. Under Sarah Goodes’ direction, Harbridge is given the space to tell Amphlett’s life story in a manner that feels consistently truthful and intimate, rarely relying on mimicry or lapsing into cheap sentimentality. The result is a work of rare sincerity—anchored, generous, and emotionally exacting—that achieves what the finest art aspires to: opening our hearts to a story worth telling, and in doing so, nourishing in us something that is collective and enduring.

Glenn Moorhouse’s exacting musical direction ensures a seamless flow between commentary and song, one that feels instinctive, purposeful, and never forced. The four-piece band brings ferocious spirit to this Australian rock-and-roll story, suitably cacophonous and libidinous in its energy. In fitting dialogue with this post-punk aesthetic is Michael Hankin’s production design, which balances rawness with clarity, meeting the visual demands of a one-woman show while allowing it to feel assured and fully realised. Paul Jackson’s lighting is similarly evocative, casting the narrative in shifting, enigmatic tones and conjuring vivid echoes of Amphlett hitting her stride on stages both humble and monumental.

In an ideal world, women would be free to become whoever they choose and to behave however they wish, so long as no harm is done. In the world as it exists, however, it falls to those with access—however limited—to power to exert it in the service of redressing systems that remain transparently unjust and exploitative. Chrissy Amphlett had ample incentive to obey every rule of the music industry and of the society that shaped it; many of her peers did exactly that, and were rewarded with far greater wealth and security. Amphlett’s defiance—calculated and instinctive alike—endures however as a legacy that remains dangerous, necessary, and worth remembering. Women may learn obedience as a means of survival, but progress is never secured through compliance; it is forged by recognising moments for resistance and exploiting them, again and again, to fracture a status quo that depends on silence to endure.

www.belvoir.com.au | www.jacarandaproductions.com.au

Review: Split Ends (Qtopia)

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

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

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

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

Review: Takatāpui (Trans Theatre Festival)

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

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

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

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

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

www.greendoortheatrecompany.com