Tag Archives: old fitzroy theatre

Review: Born On A Thursday (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Nov 28 – Dec 14, 2025
Playwright: Jack Kearney
Director: Lucy Clements
Cast: Deborah Galanos, James Lugton, Owen Hasluck, Sharon Millerchip, Sofia Nolan
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
April returns to her family home in Western Sydney after several years in Denmark, only to find that the landscape she left behind has shifted in ways no one is willing—or equipped—to articulate. In Jack Kearney’s Born on a Tuesday, the family’s chronic ineloquence becomes a kind of endurance test: months pass, crises mount, yet they orbit around their wounds with quiet desperation, unable to summon the intimacy or vulnerability required for meaningful connection. The result is a drama in which very little seems to occur, and although it captures certain truths about Australian parochialism, the writing rarely deepens those insights into a fully satisfying theatrical experience.

Lucy Clements’ direction lends the production an unmistakable gravity, keeping us attuned to the persistent despondency saturating April’s household, but that solemnity never quite translates into emotional engagement. These characters are not unsympathetic, yet we are seldom invited far enough into their inner lives to feel invested in their journeys.

The performances, however, are uniformly strong. Sharon Millerchip, as April’s mother Ingrid, delivers an impressively layered portrayal, marked by meticulous detail and a striking naturalism. Sofia Nolan’s April is earnest and committed, though the evasive quality of the writing often constrains her. Owen Hasluck brings a welcome charisma to April’s brother Isaac, while Deborah Galanos and James Lugton infuse their neighbour characters with a vividness and vitality that guard the piece from tipping entirely into gloom.

Soham Apte’s set design and Rita Naidu’s costumes evoke the suburban milieu with precision, yet offer just enough chromatic lift to keep the stage visually compelling. Veronique Benett’s lighting and Sam Cheng’s sound design are both applied with discernment, subtly shaping atmosphere and shading in tensions. Together, they support a production that strives to give weight to the many things ordinary people seem, all too often, unable to put into words.

Beneath all that reluctance to engage in difficult conversations lies a dense accumulation of resentment. The characters in Born on a Thursday, young and old alike, understand that life is no bed of roses—that its curve balls can, in fact, be catastrophic. Yet we must still find ways to keep moving. To compound those hardships by shutting out the very people to whom we are bound by kinship is its own small tragedy, and one the play suggests may be the most Australian silence of all.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.newghoststheatre.com

Review: Castrati (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Nov 11 – 16, 2025
Creator: Kit Spencer
Director: Tyler Diaz
Cast: Kit Spencer
Images by Patrick Phillips

Theatre review
Kit Spencer’s Castrati examines the three-hundred-year phenomenon of Italy’s castrati, originating in the 16th century, while placing it in dialogue with his own trajectory as transgender and a singer. What first appears as a shared limitation—the absence of lower notes—opens into a richer field of correspondences: bodies reshaped by necessity or desire, and masculinities continually reimagined at their edges. It is within these echoing transformations that Spencer locates the wellspring of his fascination.

Spencer’s writing is genuinely captivating, blending deeply honest introspection with carefully reasoned analysis. Presented with an ease of coherence yet enriched by striking complexity, Castrati proves as informative as it is engaging. Under Tyler Dias’s direction, the production channels its emotions with fervour while maintaining meticulous attention to the wealth of historical and cultural detail it brings to light.

The experience is further enriched by the formidable talents of music producer Lunar Martins, who seamlessly fuses electronic textures with traditional forms in her reinterpretations of arias by composers such as Vivaldi and Handel. Jas Borsovsky’s lighting design heightens the drama while infusing the stage with a sense of transcendent beauty, and Annika Victoria’s video projections contribute a playful exuberance through their cleverly orchestrated digital tableaux.

As performer, Spencer is raw yet remarkably sincere and endearing, bringing both vulnerability and conviction to the stage in a manner that secures our investment from the outset. The ideas he introduces span a wide terrain, as though enacting a deliberate resistance to having his thoughts reduced to anything simple or neatly contained.

Together with Spencer, we mourn the reality that boys as young as seven were compelled to sacrifice so profoundly in service of an aesthetic ideal imposed by the culture that claimed to cherish them. We are then invited to consider the men they became, and the unending challenges that must have accompanied lives shaped so drastically by those physical modifications. Although the castrato has been outlawed for more than a century, our bodies and identities continue to be pressured into conformity. For trans people, especially, the grind of enduring other people’s rigid notions of gender remains a persistent and often exhausting struggle. In the end, history reminds us that the highest notes often come from the deepest wounds.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au

Review: So Young (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Nov 7 – 22, 2025
Playwright: Douglas Maxwell
Director: Sam O’Sullivan
Cast: Aisha Aidara, Ainslie McGlynn, Henry Nixon, Jeremy Waters
Images by Richard Farland

Theatre review
Just three months after Helen’s death, her husband Milo finds himself in love again—with Greta. When Helen’s best friend Liane learns the truth over dinner, her fury is as sharp as it is justified. In So Young, Douglas Maxwell turns his attention to grief, and to the bewildering variety of ways we try to survive it. His writing glimmers with wit and tenderness, and though he captures the ache of love and loss with real conviction, the story’s moral crescendo feels a shade too emphatic—leaving us moved, yet faintly smothered by its sincerity.

Sam O’Sullivan directs with a keen psychological instinct, guiding each confrontation with an honesty that keeps us firmly inside the characters’ heads. The production might benefit from sharper attention to its comedic undercurrents, but it never loses momentum, even as emotions flare and settle in quick succession. Kate Beere’s set design grounds the story in familiar domestic realism, while Aron Murray’s lighting is finely tuned to our shifting emotional responses. Johnny Yang’s understated sound work offers just enough texture to sustain our focus without distraction.

Aisha Aidara, Ainslie McGlynn, Henry Nixon, and Jeremy Waters are evenly matched in their performances, each as compelling as the next. Their portrayals are strikingly authentic, revealing with clarity and empathy the distinct emotional truths that collide within the play’s central argument. Through their efforts, we discover a touching immediacy, revealing how grief seeps into every connection, reshaping love and loyalty in its wake.

Time is the slow balm that touches every wound, even if it never truly restores what was lost. Sorrow and anguish are woven into the fabric of being alive, as constant as breath itself. The yearning to escape pain is ancient and human, yet in watching ourselves grieve, we learn what it means to endure. To see how we break is to see how we love—and how we might heal without hurting more. However impossible it feels, the truth endures: the living must matter more than the dead.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.outhousetheatre.org

Review: Everything I Know About This Water Bottle (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Oct 7 – 17, 2025
Playwright: Michael Andrew Collins
Director: Violette Ayad
Cast: Ari Sgouros
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
Clara’s story begins millions of years ago, evolves into a toy horse, and culminates as a plastic water bottle in the 21st century. Written by Michael Andrew Collins, the one-person play Everything I Know About This Water Bottle unfolds as a whimsical odyssey from organism to object. Though rich in imagination and buoyed by moments of fanciful invention, the work ultimately distils into a rather straightforward message of ecological preservation, one that resonates on a thematic level but rarely connects beyond the immediate impression.

Directed by Violette Ayad, the production maintains an appropriate sense of gravity, even as the text itself struggles to convey emotional depth. Performer Ari Sgouros proves sure-footed and assured, exuding a warm, jovial presence that keeps the audience engaged and at ease throughout. Set and lighting designer Morgan Moroney conjures a campfire-like intimacy that draws viewers closer to the story, while Madeleine Picard’s minimal sound assemblage offers only minimal enhancement, lending texture but little transformative impact.

Everything I Know About This Water Bottle exposes, with unflinching clarity, humanity’s incapacity to prioritise its own survival. Despite decades of discourse surrounding ecological collapse, our predicament continues to worsen, suggesting an almost inherent self-destructive tendency that no amount of awareness has managed to arrest. In its quiet despair, the piece gestures toward the melancholy truth that knowledge alone cannot redeem us. What remains is a haunting portrait of a species watching itself fade, fully conscious yet strangely unmoved.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.eswrkrs.com

Review: Chicken In A Biscuit (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Oct 3 – 18, 2025
Playwrights: Mary Rachel Brown, Jamie Oxenbould 
Director: Mary Rachel Brown
Cast: Mandy Bishop, Jamie Oxenbould
Images by Becky Matthews

Theatre review
Mary Rachel Brown and Jamie Oxenbould’s Chicken in a Biscuit stitches together a handful of comic vignettes about pets and their humans. It is a playful collection that mostly delivers on its promise of amusement, serving up easy laughs and moments of recognisable absurdity. The writers occasionally flirt with taboo, but never quite bite down; the material remains amiable, lightly absurd, and ultimately harmless. Pleasant enough, but it never risks enough to truly surprise.

Brown’s direction keeps everything tidy and contained, resulting in a show that feels carefully packaged but rarely surprising; a safe bet for audiences who prefer their theatre comfortable and uncomplicated. Kate Beere’s production design injects a colourful vibrancy, touched with camp flair, that lifts the show above the merely ordinary. Aron Murray’s lighting, video, and sound design provide atmospheric support and emotional precision, opting for reliability over experimentation.

Featuring Oxenbould and Mandy Bishop in multiple roles—human, feline and canine—Chicken in a Biscuit maintains a tone of confident control. The performers’ technical proficiency and evident commitment ground the production, providing a stability that facilitates audience engagement. Their comedic timing is deft and reliable, though attempts at emotional depth inadvertently reveal the text’s limitations, exposing a lack of substantive resonance beneath the humour.

When creative writing turns to anthropomorphism, an act of mirroring takes place. It reveals us as a species that defines itself relationally — understanding what we are only by imagining what we are not. Through the animal, we are stripped of pretence, order and normative hierarchy, made to think in other languages, to locate identity in a space far removed from the familiar. Perhaps, at the heart of it, what we desire most is transformation itself — for to be human is so often to long to be something, or somewhere, else.

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

Review: She Threaded Dangerously (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Sep 18 – 27, 2025
Playwrights: Simon Thomson, Emma Wright
Director: Claudia Elbourne
Cast: Hamish Alexander, Claudia Elbourne, Karrine Kanaan, Alyssa Peters, Larissa Turton, Leon Walshe, Michael Yore
Images by Karla Elbourne

Theatre review
We follow four teenagers at an all-girls high school as their awakening sexualities threaten to steer them into dangerous waters. She Threaded Dangerously, by Simon Thomson and Emma Wright, examines the bold and unruly libidos of youth in a world that has never quite known how to hold them. Though natural and healthy, such desires are too often suppressed, and that stifling can lead to tragic consequence.

The play may at moments feel too obvious with its message, at others frustratingly vague, yet its courage in grappling with taboo subjects, including sexual abuse, is admirable. Under Claudia Elbourne’s direction, the piece pulses with vibrancy, sustaining our attention even as its restless, youthful exuberance occasionally edges toward a grating excess.

Laila McCarthy’s set design shapes the stage with sensitivity, delineating spaces that allow us to imagine the many locations of the narrative, accented by understated details that resonate with quiet effectiveness. Luna Ng’s lighting brings a striking theatricality, conjuring a remarkable range of visual textures that enrich the eye at every turn. Alexander Lee-Rekers’ sound design often sits too far in the background, but when required, it enters effortlessly to heighten the drama.

Claudia Elbourne, Karrine Kanaan, Alyssa Peters, and Larissa Turton breathe vivid life into the circle of friends at the play’s heart, tracing with playful candour the restless currents of adolescent desire. Each performer stands assured in her own presence, yet together they weave a portrait of friendship that feels generous and harmonious. Around them, Hamish Alexander, Leon Walshe, and Michael Yore embody the contradictions of conventional masculinity, shifting between its harsher veneers and the fragile emotions so often concealed beneath bravado.

As a society, we often grow overprotective of girls, guarding their safety with puritanical notions that restrict freedom, stunt growth, and prolong immaturity. True development into womanhood requires the cultivation of confidence, a process that begins with the rejection of shame, particularly in relation to how we embrace ourselves as sexual beings. She Threaded Dangerously reminds us that what matters most is how we empower the young to voice their feelings—openly, fearlessly, and free from stigma or guilt—for it is through such articulation, as distinct from secrecy, that healthy growth truly flourishes.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.instagram.com/senseless.productions

Review: Birdsong Of Tomorrow (Griffin Theatre Co)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Aug 21 – Sep 13, 2025
Playwright: Nathan Harrison
Director: Emma McManus
Cast: Nathan Harrison
Images by Lucy Parakhina

Theatre review
In Birdsong of Tomorrow, Nathan Harrison rhapsodizes about birds that trace their origins to the age of dinosaurs, and about songs that took flight millions of years before humans set foot on the earth. At once a meditation on time and change, on life and death, Birdsong of Tomorrow resounds most urgently as a plea for ecological preservation, emerging at a moment when humanity seems fatigued by its own fight to protect the earth.

Directed by Emma McManus, the show conveys tenderness and sensitivity, tempered by occasional ironic humour that keeps its earnestness from becoming overbearing. Harrison is an endearing presence, and his command of the text keeps us engaged with his message, even when the specificity of his interests sometimes veers into the overly niche. He is joined by Tom Hogan, whose inventive live musical accompaniment enriches the experience immeasurably.

Lights by Saint Clair ensure warmth, along with small doses of drama that provide a sense of theatricality. Surrounded by archaic forms of media technology, Harrison comments on temporal transformations, and the habitual wastefulness of modern life responsible for the degradation of our environment. Attuning ourselves to the song of nature offers no efficiency, no measurable productivity within a capitalist framework, revealing that the values we so readily embrace will, in the end, be our undoing.

www.griffintheatre.com.au

Review: Betrayal (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Jul 18 – Aug 10, 2025
Playwright: Harold Pinter
Director: Cristabel Sved
Cast: Andrew Cutcliffe, Matt Hardie, Diego Retamales, Ella Scott Lynch
Images by Kate Williams

Theatre review
Emma has been sleeping with her husband’s best friend for years. It would appear that she loves both men deeply, but convention deems this highly improper, forcing all parties to endure stages of anguish as they grapple with the perceived transgression. Harold Pinter’s Betrayal is almost half a century old, yet it seems little has changed in terms of middle-class values and the cultural dominance of monogamy. The play suggests an absurdity in the weight we assign to traditional matrimony, yet Pinter’s narrative remains relevant, even in 2025.

Directed by Cristabel Sved, the work unfolds with ample earnestness, often at the sacrifice of irony and humour. Characters understandably take their circumstances extremely seriously, but it can be argued that the actors should adopt a more observational and discursive approach to improve our intellectual engagement with the show.

Debonair actor Andrew Cutcliffe rises to the challenge as Robert, delivering a satisfying theatricality with his sardonic interpretation of the text. Ella Scott Lynch plays Emma commendably, capturing psychological accuracy even though some of the comedy is compromised. Matt Hardie, too, places emphasis on the realism of the piece but misses the opportunity to create a more entertaining portrayal of Jerry, the secret paramour. A brief appearance by Diego Retamales as a waiter at an Italian restaurant, offers moments of idiosyncrasy that really benefit the production.

Set design by Melanie Liertz is minimally rendered, but certainly sufficient in helping us engage with interactions between friends and lovers. Her costumes however could be more detailed in their depiction of timelines. Lights by Verity Hampson and Luna Ng are immensely helpful in creating the many spatial transformations. It is arguable whether the video projections by Aron Murray are necessary, but they are nonetheless a pleasing sight. Music by Steve Toumin, along with sound design by Johnny Yang are appropriately subdued, and are effective in enhancing the production’s relentlessly serious atmosphere.

Infidelity is painful to go through, but it is also highly comical. We insist on making promises we are incapable of keeping, only to torment ourselves trying to escape the messes we inevitably create. Betrayal does not explain why we allow Emma only to sleep with one man, but it can be seen that her turmoil becomes increasingly meaningless over the course of the play. Traditions deserve scrutiny, and often, what appears deeply important may not be so at all.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.sportforjove.com.au

Review: Sistren (Griffin Theatre Co)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Jun 26 – Jul 12, 2025
Playwright: Iolanthe
Director: Ian Michael
Cast: Janet Anderson, Iolanthe
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
Isla and Violet are the closest of friends, and being seventeen years of age, that bond has an intensity unlikely to ever recur. Sistren by Iolanthe is often glib and irreverent in tone, but a deep sincerity emerges unexpectedly at various points, making sure that the play touches us ultimately, with meaningful intention and consequential impact. Iolanthe’s writing is brazenly loose in structure, and defiantly meandering, in its resistance of formal conventions that uphold linear progression and cohesion.

Director Ian Michael is on hand to imbue a powerful emotional trajectory, that places us on an ever rising crescendo of visceral charge. The politics of Sistren is undeniable, with a modern brand of feminism characterised by radical inclusivity,  resulting in a work of theatre that is able to speak vociferously, yet never alienates.

As we watch Isla and Violet negotiate their differences, with one being Black and cis, and the other white and trans, we too experience that push and pull of being constantly caught between right and wrong. Living consciously political means that there is an ideal to strive for, as embodied by the girls’ love and friendship, but also always having to contend with flawed methods of progression. The point is to be able to trust.

Production design by Emma White is appropriately playful in approach. Lighting design by Kelsey Lee provides a wealth of visual flourish that proves thoroughly elevative. Video projections by TK Abiyoe are a delightful addition, as is sound design by Daniel Herten, memorable for a camp zaniness that keeps the show squarely in the realm of queer.

Iolanthe herself takes to the stage, playing Isla along with Janet Andersons’ Violet. What we witness is a singular chemistry, distinguished by the two women’s shared humour, which shapes a theatrical experience remarkable for the intimacy of the world it opens to us. Together they create a work of art distinct for its specificity, one that feels inimitable and therefore completely evanescent. In their unusual unity and love, in seeing two characters who have every reason to hate each other, we are compelled to reflect on the meaning of difference in a world fixated on division.

www.griffintheatre.com.au | www.greendoortheatrecompany.com

Review: Mary Jane (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), May 23 – Jun 15, 2025
Playwright: Amy Herzog
Director: Rachel Chant
Cast: Di Adams, Sophie Bloom, Isabel Burton, Eloise Snape, Janine Watson
Images by Phil Erbacher 

Theatre review
Mary Jane is about a single mother and her medically complex 2-year-old, trying to make things work in Queens, New York. It is a challenging life to say the least, and playwright Amy Herzog certainly goes to great pains, in a work of sobering realism, to ensure that we see how her central character barely survives the ongoing ordeal.

Although not entirely humourless, this staging of Herzog’s 2017 piece is intensely dour. Directed by Rachel Chant, the depiction of despondency for the mother and son in Mary Jane, is almost suffocating with its moroseness.  Leading lady Eloise Snape brings a valuable believability to the story, and is admirable for the unaffected naturalism she is able to maintain. Set design by Soham Apte too is focussed on delivering authenticity, leaving a remarkable impression with a scenic transformation that demonstrates considerable inventiveness.

Some art is more difficult than others. Mary Jane may not be an entertaining experience, but it does draw attention to issues that we routinely look away from. We can observe and try to think up solutions. We can ponder on how predicaments like this could be avoided. We can simply be present and witness something truthful, if only as a reminder that nobody has to be alone.

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