Tag Archives: play

Review: Dial M For Murder (Ensemble Theatre)

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Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Nov 28, 2025 – Jan 11, 2026
Playwright: Jeffrey Hatcher (from the original by Frederick Knott)
Director: Mark Kilmurry
Cast: Garth Holcombe, Madeleine Jones, Kenneth Moraleda, Anna Samson, David Soncin
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
Margot is conducting an affair, unaware that her husband Tony is quietly engineering her murder. Yet in Dial M for Murder, even the most meticulous schemes refuse to unfold as intended, giving rise to a cascade of unforeseen twists. Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Frederick Knott’s seminal play and film may not conform to the conventions of a traditional whodunnit, but it possesses all the hallmarks of an investigative classic—suspenseful, cunningly constructed, and keeping us on tenterhooks as we strain to anticipate its final reckoning.

Marvellously taut direction from Mark Kilmurry, laced with a gentle, sly humour, yields a thoroughly engaging night at the theatre. While Kilmurry’s treatment of this 1952 tale is not especially inventive, it has no difficulty holding us captive throughout. Each plot revelation is unveiled with delectable finesse, delivering the kind of satisfaction that reminds us why this genre endures so effortlessly.

Nick Fry’s handsome set design allows for fluid, elegant movement, while presenting a sophisticated colour palette that evokes the period yet remains visually appealing. His costumes, impeccably realised, convincingly embody the refinement of the English upper class. Matt Cox’s lighting, with its warm amber glow, flatters the stage picture and injects a quietly simmering dramatic tension. Madeleine Picard’s music, lush and evocative of mid-century cinema, proves sumptuous throughout, ever attuned to deepening the atmosphere of intrigue.

Anna Samson and Garth Holcombe embody, with remarkable acuity, a couple burdened by secrets. Both deliver finely detailed performances that steer the narrative through its dizzying succession of twists, offering a delectable touch of extravagance that never tips into excess. Madeleine Jones and David Soncin provide compelling support, but it is Kenneth Moraleda’s turn as Inspector Hubbard that proves especially irresistible. He infuses the role with a distinctive quirkiness, lending the production an added spark that elevates its overall charm. At the end, the production is an excellent reminder of how perversely delightful it can be to revel in a story woven from such unabashedly heinous acts.

www.ensemble.com.au

Review: The Seagull (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Nov 21 – Dec 6, 2025
Playwright: Saro Lusty-Cavallari (after Anton Chekhov)
Director: Saro Lusty-Cavallari
Cast: Talia Benatar, Kath Gordon, Jason Jefferies, Deborah Jones, Saro Lepejian, Tim McGarry, Brendan Miles, Shan-Ree Tan, Alexandra Travers
Images by Robert Miniter

Theatre review
In Saro Lusty-Cavallari’s adaptation of The Seagull, the action is deftly relocated from late-19th-century Russia to the 2020 COVID lockdown in Bellingen, an idyllic township north of Sydney. Chekhov’s characters preserve their familiar longings and disappointments, and in this contemporary reframing it becomes unmistakably clear that the disillusionment of young theatrical hopefuls like Konstantin and Nina is far from an antiquated concern. Lusty-Cavallari reveals a marked vulnerability in this iteration of the classic, offering transparent glimpses of autobiography woven through an updated tale that engages meaningfully with the inner workings—and inner wounds—of Sydney’s theatre world.

Although its context is reimagined, this production maintains a striking fidelity to Chekhov’s spirit, arriving—somewhat unexpectedly—at a tone that feels almost traditional for a genre no longer in vogue. Lusty-Cavallari’s exuberant humour, threaded generously throughout, reshapes a well-worn tale of existential drift into something distinctly bittersweet, and, thankfully, thoroughly engaging and enjoyable.

Konstantin is rendered with remarkable intricacy by Saro Lepejian, who layers nuance upon nuance to create a character of great authenticity and warmth, allowing us to grasp him with unusual depth and familiarity. Alexandra Travers is equally compelling as Nina, lifting the archetype of the innocent ingénue into a figure of luminous humanity; her final scenes prove disarmingly profound and affecting under Travers’ interpretation. Also notable is Tim McGarry’s wonderfully idiosyncratic Pyotr, delivered with exquisite comic timing and an assured lightness of touch, earning some of the production’s most memorable laughs.

Kate Beere’s set and costume design provides elegant, uncluttered solutions that allow the intricate emotional dynamics to remain firmly in view. Aron Murray’s lighting is exquisitely attuned to each fluctuation in tone, guiding us seamlessly into not only the work’s dramatic intensities but also its well-timed moments of levity, which together render the production genuinely delightful.

It may feel incongruous to watch Chekhov’s characters driven to the point of shooting themselves in a contemporary Australian setting, yet the deep-seated malaise that fuels such despair remains clearly recognisable in our present moment. These upper-middle-class figures seem perpetually unable to attain what they long for, even as they dismiss what is already theirs—a conundrum that, now more than ever, echoes uncomfortably through many of our own lives.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.montaguebasement.com

Review: Congratulations, Get Rich! 恭喜发财, 人日快乐 (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Wharf 1 Sydney Theatre Company (Walsh Bay NSW), Nov 21 – Dec 14, 2025
Playwright: Merlynn Tong
Director: Courtney Stewart
Cast: Zac Boulton, Seong Hui Xuan, Merlynn Tong, Kimie Tsukakoshi 
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
It is opening day at Mandy’s new karaoke bar, and she is plainly on the verge of collapse. It also happens to be her thirty-eighth birthday—a milestone that terrifies her, for both her mother and grandmother died at precisely that age. Amid this psychological unravelling, those very forebears return as ghosts from the afterlife or underworld, appearing as if to mock her dread and deepen her sense of inevitability. Congratulations, Get Rich! by Merlynn Tong, probes the intertwined notions of curses and legacies—ideas often treated as distinct but revealed here to be inseparable. Mandy fears repeating history, even as she begins to recognise, somewhere beneath the panic, that her own hard-won successes might yet rewrite the story her family has carried for generations.

The writing is wildly inventive, holding us rapt from the first moment to the last. Unpredictable and delightfully eccentric, it balances sincerity with a sense of the marvellously outlandish. Courtney Stewart’s direction brings together rich cultural specificity and deep emotional truth, guiding a story that moves between Singapore and Australia while allowing its layered meanings to reverberate across cultural lines. At times the humour edges toward the contrived, yet the production’s unwavering commitment to its distinctive tone renders even its most exaggerated moments disarmingly persuasive.

James Lew’s production design is richly considered, weaving symbolism into a visual language that is at once grounded and strikingly theatrical. His work carries a pleasurable sense of extravagance, yet never loses sight of the social resonances that inform each aesthetic choice. Gabriel Chan’s lighting is similarly exuberant, though one occasionally wishes for greater nuance to draw us further into the emotional terrain. Guy Webster’s sound design, gloriously amplified and unabashedly heightened, proves an ideal match for the work’s supernatural comic register. Particularly noteworthy are the original songs that Tong weaves into the piece, rendered delightfully camp through Alex Van den Broek’s playful, uninhibited music direction.

An exceptional ensemble anchors the production, with Tong herself embodying Mandy with indefatigable verve and an arresting emotional intensity. Kimie Tsukakoshi delivers a masterfully layered performance as the grandmother—precise, commanding, and utterly persuasive in her traversal of time and space. As Mandy’s mother, Seong Hui Xuan is unassailably authentic, capturing the poignant duality of a woman who bequeaths her daughter both profound anxieties and an equally steadfast resilience. Zachary Boulton shines as Xavier, Mandy’s partner in life and business, his impeccable comic timing offering welcome buoyancy whenever the domestic tensions threaten to overwhelm. The ensemble as a whole is remarkable for its discipline and cohesion, contributing to a staging distinguished by its tightness, clarity, and shared purpose.

The three women of Congratulations, Get Rich!, spanning three generations, trace a lineage of womanhood that feels both linear and perpetual—distinct lives that nonetheless echo one another with a clarity suggesting something almost divine in the continuity of mothers and daughters. Across cultures, whether East or West, women are routinely diminished, yet time and again reveal themselves to be far more powerful than the structures that seek to contain them. Mandy’s ancestors may have been claimed too early by the worlds that shaped them, but their struggles permeate unmistakably into the present. Mandy, however, stands on different ground, no longer bound by their limitations—and poised, at last, to carry the story further.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au | www.laboite.com.au

Review: Cowbois (Seymour Centre)

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Venue: Seymour Centre (Chippendale NSW), Nov 20 – Dec 13, 2025
Playwright: Charlie Josephine
Director: Kate Gaul
Cast: Matthew Abotomey, Zachary Aleksander, Jules Billington, Emily Cascarino, Faith Chaza, Branden Christine, Clay Crighton, Nelson Fannon, Lana Filies, Nicholas Hiatt, Henry Lopez, Aimie McKenna, Edward O’Leary, Jane Phegan, Rory Spinks, Leon Walshe
Images by Alex Vaughan

Theatre review
Set in the Wild West of 1883, Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois introduces us to Jack, a fugitive whose sudden arrival in a quietly dwindling frontier town—its menfolk having vanished into the goldfields—sparks a quietly radical upheaval. Encountering only women, the handsome outlaw quickly finds that their initial suspicion melts away, even as he is forthright about being trans. Josephine’s 2023 play is a wonderfully fantastical reimagining of the Western, an exuberant, if at times didactic, meditation on gender, desire, and the myths that shape them.

Kate Gaul’s direction is spirited and mischievously playful, though the production would benefit from a brisker pace and humour honed to a finer edge. As Jack, non-binary actor Jules Billington delivers a riveting, impassioned performance that swiftly earns our allegiance. Equally compelling are fellow non-binary performers Faith Chaza and Clay Crighton, each articulating masculinity in strikingly different—yet equally resonant—forms.

Production designer Emelia Simcox excels across both costumes and sets, supplying everything necessary for us to recognise the genre’s familiar iconography while elevating it with a visual flair that sustains a satisfying sense of theatricality. Brockman’s lighting shifts deftly between warm, atmospheric glow and bursts of exuberant spectacle, lending the production an invigorating dynamism. The action is further enriched by an expansive soundtrack devised by Crighton, whose intricately crafted soundscape transports us wholly into the world the play conjures.

It is long overdue that queer audiences are offered stories in which inspiration and hope arise from something other than supplication or suffering. Such visions, like those in Cowbois, may demand audacious leaps of imagination, but they constitute an art we richly deserve. By coupling truth with fantasy, we begin to fashion new modes of self-determination, claiming the right to decide how we are seen—and, ultimately, how we choose to be.

www.seymourcentre.com | www.sirentheatreco.com

Review: Gravity (Qtopia)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Nov 12 – 29, 2025
Playwright: Bradford Elmore
Director: Anthony Skuse
Cast: Wesley Senna Cortes, Annabelle Kablean, Drew Wilson
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
Christopher is sleeping with David, which is a problem because he lives firmly in the heteronormative world and remains deeply in love with his wife, Heather. The late discovery of his bisexuality is proving highly inconvenient, especially in a milieu where monogamy is the norm and hearts shatter at the faintest whiff of infidelity. In Gravity, Bradford Elmore charts a double-pronged coming out: a man who finds himself unexpectedly same-sex attracted, and simultaneously yearning for a polyamorous life. Elmore’s play is sensitively rendered and undeniably thoughtful, but its narrative ultimately drifts in circles, its ideas stagnating and looping without sufficient progression.

Direction by Anthony Skuse is deeply respectful of the experiences being depicted, perhaps a touch too solemn for a story that is ultimately not all that heavy. His set design mirrors his directorial sensibility—elegant, measured, and marked by a tasteful restraint. James Wallis’ lighting is a quiet triumph, infusing the staging with a tender, luminous beauty. The cast of three deliver focused, committed performances, though their occasional drift into melodrama feels misplaced. A sharper vein of humour would have gone a long way toward making the production a more engaging and dynamic watch.

People cannot help how they fall in love, and Christopher’s story reminds us that what is utterly natural becomes endlessly tangled by societal norms. Gravity reveals how the lives we imagine for ourselves are so often built on fanciful ideals and inherited conventions. Humans struggle to simply let things be; we push against our own nature, believing our choices to be rational, even as they lead us down winding, fruitless paths. The place where Christopher finally arrives should always have been clear, yet it seems we must wander through frustration and heartache before recognising the truths that were quietly waiting for us all along.

www.qtopiasydney.com.au | www.rogueprojects.com.au

Review: Present Laughter (New Theatre)

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Venue: New Theatre (Newtown NSW), Nov 11 – Dec 13, 2025
Playwright: Noël Coward 
Director: Louise Fischer
Cast: Lib Campbell, Peter Eyers, Liz Grindley, Molly Haddon, Oliver Harcourt-Ham, Michela Noonan, Reuben Solomon, Larissa Turton, Luke Visentin, Emily Weare
Images by Chris Lundie

Theatre review
It is England, circa 1940, and stage star Garry seems to spend his days deflecting admirers and his nights dazzling audiences. Noël Coward’s Present Laughter unfolds in this bubble of delightful frivolity, offering exactly the kind of airy escapism wartime audiences must have craved. Its antics may feel less coherent to contemporary sensibilities, but Coward’s charm endures — a style at once nostalgic and unmistakably evergreen.

Directed by Louise Fischer, the production cultivates an appealing old-world ambience, though it struggles to maintain momentum over its three-hour span. The comedic cadence frequently slackens, revealing an unevenness that the staging cannot fully disguise. Conversely design elements prove more assured. Tom Bannerman’s set makes good use of space while providing a measure of opulence befitting the celebrity milieu on display. Costumes by Helen Kohlhagen and Deborah Mulhall are likewise evocative of the era, offering a gentle wash of glamour providing a welcome sense of visual elevation.

Playing Garry, Peter Eyers is suitably debonair and self-satisfied, yet he never quite leans into the necessary silliness or flamboyance for the humour to land with conviction. Reuben Solomon and Luke Visentin offer welcome surges of energy in their respective roles as Morris and Roland, but it is Lib Campbell’s portrayal of Joanna that proves most compelling, her wholehearted embrace of the role’s inherent extravagance aligning most effectively with the production’s comedic register.

It is noteworthy that the role of Henry has been reconceived as Hetty in this rendition of Present Laughter, thereby transforming a key relationship into a same-sex one. This adjustment gestures toward the enduring significance of Coward’s legacy for queer communities, reaffirming our ongoing celebration of his oeuvre. Aesthetics and values inevitably shift across generations, but for now at least, Coward’s humour continues to cut through — proof that real wit ages better than most of us do.

www.newtheatre.org.au

Review: Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney NSW), Nov 7 – Dec 14, 2025
Playwright: Edward Albee
Director: Sarah Goodes
Cast: Emily Goddard, Kat Stewart, David Whiteley, Harvey Zielinski
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
Martha and George are locked in perpetual combat, their hostility not merely private but performative. Their decision to invite a young couple into their home becomes an act of exhibition, a deliberate staging of their mutual destruction. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee exposes the tenacity with which individuals cling to their own suffering, sustained by an insatiable attachment to prestige, privilege, and power. Though Martha and George possess the agency to abandon their cyclical torment, they remain ensnared by the illusion of respectability, choosing the stability of social appearance over the uncertainty of liberation.

At sixty-three years old, the play has become something of a grand old dame of the theatrical canon, yet its genuinely subversive sensibilities ensure it remains as confrontational and affecting as ever. Under the direction of Sarah Goodes, the work gains renewed vitality: she not only excavates the raw truths within Martha and George’s volatile dynamic but also deftly unearths the humour embedded in their vicious exchanges. Goodes has taken an enduring classic and rendered it freshly incisive—polished to a gleam, yet capable of striking with the force of a blunt instrument.

Harriet Oxley’s production design evokes the period with accuracy—perhaps a touch conventional, yet undeniably effective in grounding the drama. Matt Scott’s lighting, together with music and sound design by Grace Ferguson and Ethan Hunter, begins with subtle restraint, almost imperceptible at first, but grows increasingly potent as the evening unfolds. By the time the bickering subsides and the underlying trauma surfaces, their contributions prove essential, shaping the production’s emotional crescendo with impressive efficacy.

Kat Stewart could hardly be more compelling in the role of Martha. She delivers a richly nuanced portrayal, demonstrating an intricate grasp of the character’s psychological intricacies while imbuing every moment with delectable theatricality. Her gestures, whether minute or grand, command attention, and we remain enthralled by each. As George, David Whiteley conjures the precise timbre of the mid-century American bourgeoisie through his masterful vocal modulations. His comparatively restrained approach proves just as resonant and magnetic as Stewart’s flamboyance, creating a riveting equilibrium in this deliciously acrimonious marital duel. By contrast, the younger couple, Honey and Nick—played by Emily Goddard and Harvey Zielinski—are less persuasive. Though their performances elicit steady laughter, their characterisations lack conviction, never fully embodying the personas they attempt to construct.

We can see so clearly that Martha and George could lead far better lives, if only they could embrace a simpler existence. Yet the seductive allure of wealth and status keeps them shackled to their interminable misery. Each day, they choose to persist in their poisonous habits, unable—or unwilling—to relinquish the trappings of class that sustain their suffering. In the end, we recognise something of ourselves in their torment—the way we cling to what hurts us most, simply because it feels like home.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: Monstrous (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Oct 31 – Nov 15, 2025
Playwrights: Zev Aviv, Lu Bradshaw, Byron Davis
Director: Lu Bradshaw
Cast: Zev Aviv, Byron Davis
Images by Valerie Joy

Theatre review
Chris and John meet at work, and an inexplicable attraction develops—something not quite romantic, yet undeniably charged with desire. When they finally give in to that magnetic pull, Chris moves on as though nothing has occurred, but John is irrevocably altered. His encounter with Chris has changed something fundamental in his mind, body, and perhaps even his soul. Monstrous keeps its meaning deliberately elusive, as if subscribing to the modern dictum, “if you know, you know.”

Lu Bradshaw’s direction fuses horror and the supernatural to conjure a meditation on embodiment—how the body can betray, transform, or transcend itself—exploring corporeal experience in all its contradictions: metaphysical yet visceral, intimate yet alien, and ultimately revealing the uneasy truth that our bodies are never as stable as we believe them to be.

Zev Aviv plays Chris with a compelling ambiguity of intent, yet an identity that is unmistakably trans. Their very presence signals that Monstrous’ meditations on flesh and blood emerge from a distinctly trans gaze, even if the work never makes that perspective explicit. Byron Davis, as John, is bright and mercurial, his performance brimming with restless energy that draws us in completely—by turns beguiling and bewildering, but always alive.

Corey Lange’s set design is understated yet effective, grounding the production in recognisable, everyday spaces. Lighting by Theodore Carroll and Anwyn Brook-Evans is boldly executed, heightening the story’s sense of the fantastical and encouraging us to see the body anew. Ellie Wilson’s sound design adds both intensity and texture, its esoteric undercurrents propelling us toward a heightened awareness of our physical selves, creating an aural landscape that seems to pull our bodies into the mystery it seeks to unveil.

John is one thing one moment, and something entirely different the next. What emerges takes him completely by surprise, leaving him powerless to resist. His own body becomes unfamiliar terrain—something alien, unpredictable, and alive with hidden will. There are many moments in life when our bodies can feel foreign to us: strange, unrecognisable, beyond our control. The body remains an endless mystery, even as we insist on treating it as something fixed and knowable. That tension between discovery and fear is where the terror lies—in realising that what feels monstrous may only ever be natural, when its strangeness refuses to conform and the body asserts itself in ways our simple minds cannot quite comprehend.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.instagram.com/red_zebra_productions

Review: Bonny & Read (Qtopia)

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Venue: Qtopia (Darlinghurst NSW), Oct 29 – Nov 8, 2025
Music and Lyrics: Ben James, Aiden Smith, Emily Whiting
Book: Aiden Smith, Emily Whiting
Director: Holly Mazzola
Cast: Elliot Aitken, Tori Bullard, Percy Chiu, Max Fernandez, Ben James, Helen Jordan-Lane, Gabi Lanham, Jack Mitsch, Alex Travers
Images by Patrick Phillips

Theatre review
Mary Read’s longing for the sea compels her to disguise herself as a man and sign aboard a merchant vessel. Fate brings her face to face with the infamous pirate Anne Bonny, and what begins as captivity soon evolves into love. In Bonny & Read, writers Ben James, Aiden Smith, and Emily Whiting revisit this 18th-century romance through a distinctly contemporary lens, crafting a musical that reclaims two legendary women from history’s margins and lets their passion sail freely at last.

The songs are engaging, if somewhat conventional, elevated by Iris Wu’s sumptuous musical direction and the cohesive aural textures shaped by sound designer Sam Cheng. While the story itself is compelling, the book of Bonny & Read can feel unnecessarily convoluted, and Holly Mazzola’s direction does little to untangle its narrative knots. Still, her instinct for spectacle is undeniable, and with Lauren Mitchell’s energetic choreography, the production maintains a lively momentum even when its storytelling falters.

Geita Goarin’s production design is modest but evocative, sketching the period with just enough texture to spark the imagination. It is, however, Luna Ng’s lighting that truly captivates — rich in drama and ambition, it shapes the emotional contours of the piece with clarity and grace, revealing the story’s subtler undercurrents and giving its sentiment a luminous depth.

Vocally, the cast ranges from competent to exceptional, with Gabi Lanham delivering a standout performance as Mary Read, her voice both rich and assured. The acting, however, is uneven across the ensemble. Tori Bullard brings sincerity and emotional intensity to Anne Bonny, offering a grounded presence amid the production’s more variable performances.

The story of Mary Read and Anne Bonny is a vivid reminder of queer forebears whose lives were too often erased or silenced by history. Their courage — at sea, in love, and in defiance of rigid conventions — still echoes across the centuries. Bonny & Read illuminates this hidden legacy, celebrating two women who claimed their freedom on their own terms, and suggesting that queer communities might take a page from the pirate’s book: to chart daring courses, embrace audacity, and live boldly, even when the world seeks to bury them.

www.qtopiasydney.com.au

Review: Naturism (Griffin Theatre Company)

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Venue: Wharf 2 Sydney Theatre Company (Walsh Bay NSW), Oct 25 – Nov 15, 2025
Playwright: Ang Collins
Director: Declan Greene
Cast: Nicholas Brown, Glenn Hazeldine, Fraser Morrison, Camila Ponte Alvarez, Hannah Waterman
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
Ray presides over a small naturist commune on the outskirts of Melbourne, where its residents have lived off-grid for two decades. When Evangeline arrives unannounced, eager to join their secluded world, her intrusion sets off a quiet chain reaction that exposes the fault lines beneath the community’s calm surface. Ang Collins’ Naturism proves shrewdly more comic than polemic, even as an unmistakable ecological consciousness anchors the work. At a time when conversations about the environment often feel exhausting, Collins reminds us that laughter, too, can be an act of engagement.

Director Declan Greene wisely leans into the comedy, shaping a production that never hesitates to seize any opportunity for laughter. The exuberance he brings to the staging is infectious, even if the material itself often feels slight. Naturism may not offer much in the way of emotional or thematic depth, and our investment in its characters remains limited, yet the show’s buoyant energy and brisk 85-minute runtime ensure that our attention rarely drifts.

James Browne’s set design employs simple means to evocatively suggest the wilderness that frames the story. His costumes are a particular delight, especially in the hallucinatory sequences where the characters venture into the fantastical. Verity Hampson’s lighting is gloriously extravagant, embracing theatricality as the narrative heightens and the stakes rise. David Bergman’s sound and music design match that intensity, growing ever more vivid as the production slides into the deliciously bizarre.

The cast deserves admiration for their wholehearted commitment to what at times appears an unabashedly absurd enterprise. All five performers throw themselves into the work, mining every moment for humour and vitality. Their choices may verge on the outrageous, yet they sustain a surprising authenticity that prevents the piece from slipping into pure frivolity. It’s also worth noting that the ensemble spends much of the performance entirely nude — a fact that only deepens respect for their courage and conviction.

The characters in Naturism throw themselves wholeheartedly into doing right by the planet, yet their misadventures expose how fraught it can be to live by uncompromising ideals. We’re beginning to see that an “all or nothing” approach—whether ecological or political—often proves unsustainable, alienating those who might otherwise engage. The culture of guilt and moral absolutism around environmental action can drive people to withdraw entirely, when what the planet needs most are imperfect participants, not perfect abstainers.

www.griffintheatre.com.au