‘Trashing most conventions of respectable theatre’: The first Fringe reviews are in

THEATRE
In Bed With My Brother | Philosophy of the World
Meat Market, until October 3

Affectionately known as the best worst band ever, The Shaggs were a trio of young sisters from Exeter, New Hampshire whose astonishingly inept songs were later reappraised as genius by the likes of Kurt Cobain and Frank Zappa.

That’s the official story, at least. Here, another trio reviews the legacy forced upon three women who never wanted their spot in the limelight, but who were made to perform and record by a domineering father.

In other hands this material would lend itself to satire and condescension, but UK outfit In Bed With My Brother treats The Shaggs with respect while simultaneously trashing most conventions of respectable theatre. If you like your performances truly unpredictable, this is your ticket. Bristling with barely-containable energy and randomly erupting into violence, music or comedy, the work suggests that to truly redeem artists with no aesthetic merit requires us to rewrite the rules of art itself.
★★★★★
Reviewed by John Bailey

COMEDY

Elliot Wood | Mrs Lovett’s Famous Meat Pies Grand Reopening Extravaganza

Trades Hall, until October 4

Fancy a bit of cannibalism with your comedy? Elliot Wood has you covered – and it’s no wonder why this show scored a Best Newcomer nomination at the Comedy Festival and has returned for an encore season.

Two centuries on from the partnership with the demon barber Sweeney Todd in the penny dreadful series, Wood (literally) carves out an, ahem, deliciously camp and deranged version of Mrs Lovett. But didn’t she die? No, in Wood’s world she was cryogenically frozen rather than thrown into a furnace. She’s departed Fleet Street and comes to Melbourne to indulge in her favourite pastime: making meat pies filled with the human remains of Todd’s murder victims.

Accompanied by a disturbingly muted assistant named Kitchenette, Lovett engages the crowd to help prepare her signature dishes. While audience participation is rife, Wood ensures that only the willing are brought to the stage (you’re offered a raffle ticket on arrival, and if your number is called and you’d prefer to stay in your seat, the show moves on seamlessly). The gags come rapid-fire and the wordplay is first-rate. One would be wise to not wear white, however: there is a splash zone. While the hour will give your stomach a workout, it’s a shame that the main cuisine on offer in the foyer of Trades Hall this year is almost all pies. You don’t quite leave with a craving for one.
★★★★
Reviewed by Tyson Wray

THEATRE
Cat Finch and Rose Bishop, performed by Annie Lumsden | Ghostware
Festival Hub: Meat Market – Craft Room, until October 10

“Loose in the cloud” calls to mind something free-flowing and ethereal, but in the play Ghostware, its connotations are far more sinister: Gertie (Annie Lumsden) is plagued by a version of her dead sister Bea’s consciousness that is permanently embedded in the digital ether. Thanks to a watertight contract, Bea is here to stay and what’s worse: she pays for herself by continually unfurling sponsored content on her grief-afflicted family.

Back after its debut at last year’s Fringe, Cat Finch and Rose Bishop’s tight one-hander masterfully conjures a time in which manufacturing has all but been outsourced and robotic essential workers are commonplace. That the world-building is so effective is due in large part to Lumsden, who expertly conveys Gertie’s interiority while inhabiting the flights and foibles of various characters – from her eccentric parents to the decrepit lawyer and young hacker she seeks in desperate attempts to rid herself of AI Bea.

Amid a sea of baby blue packing boxes, we watch as Gertie grapples with the spectres of loss, unfulfilled potential and acute unbelonging. Ghostware is a deeply felt, darkly humorous and strangely affecting play about the things we do to escape ourselves and others.
★★★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

THEATRE

Mary-Agnes O’Loughlin | Glimpses of Heaven

The Motley Bauhaus, until October 4

In Glimpses of Heaven, Mary-Agnes O’Loughlin draws inspiration (or should that be devastation?) from the battles with alcoholism, drug dependence and mental health issues of her own mother, comedic veteran Fiona O’Loughlin. Fiona’s struggles in the past are well-documented. She’s never been one to shy away from detailing her addiction and a 2013 suicide attempt (that she credits Mary-Agnes for saving her life from).

A partly fictionalised story, the reality of Mary-Agnes’ truths about her upbringing are laid bare. She performs as Hannah, attending the apartment of her mother – an illustrious musician with chaotic habits (of which Fiona herself provides the voiceovers for) – to pack her belongings. All of the sentimental keepsakes elicit memories from a childhood with a mother constantly in the spotlight and turning a blind eye to the lowlights caused due to her compulsions. The show asks: is unconditional love possible when you’re watching a family member slowly killing themselves? Is any amount of fame and fortune amassed worth it if you seem destined to join the 27 Club, even if you may be a few years past the admission date?

Under the directorial eye of another Australian comedy mainstay, Damian Callinan, there’s also humour to be found throughout the morbid storytelling intertwined with well-choreographed dance and music. Glimpses of Heaven is a tender, vulnerable exploration of the struggles with the concepts of familial love, intergenerational trauma and the catharsis found in forgiveness. While it must come recommended with the caveat of a strong trigger warning for anyone with a history of domestic distress, it’s a very impressive solo debut deserving of a main-stage season in future runs to come.
★★★★
Reviewed by Tyson Wray

THEATRE
Ryan Hamilton and Georgie Wolfe | F— Your Funding
Festival Hub: Trades Hall – Solidarity Hall, until October 4

What if, over the course of a night, you could agitate for the arts to occupy a more central place in the political agenda and redress inequitable funding models? Such concerns reach an apotheosis at the 2026 Melba Awards, a fictional annual celebration of seriously high stakes in the play F— Your Funding. Hosted by a venerated opera singer and opened by an imagined version of the Victorian arts minister, the night descends into chaos when two cultural terrorists hold them at gunpoint with a list of demands.

F— Your Funding is at its most uproarious when it’s laying bare the arts sector’s greatest hypocrisies. A slide containing a list of morally vacuous donors? Tick. A politician lauding the cultural cachet of Melbourne while refusing to bolster the arts sector in any real, tangible way? Tick.

As the play lurches wildly from farcical hijinks to sincere proselytising about the role of art in a whiplash-inducing manner, it simultaneously lampoons itself and us while paying homage to its intended audience. Leftists too busy preaching to the converted and fighting among one another to organise. Artists making work centred on their latest diagnoses. Clowns.
★★★★
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

DANCE
Caroline Meaden | Immacolata
Chunky Move Studios, until October 3

This is a beautifully strange and melancholy solo dance vigil: a restless choreographic grisaille, delicate and disquieting. Caroline Meaden struts and frets, with crisp bird-like movements, then hesitates. Always there is hesitation in this work. Then an arm – or a hand or a leg – begins to wobble. It’s like a part of the body just turns to water.

The dimly lit stage is furnished with only a clothes rack, some biscuit crumbs and a stool, but Meaden keeps mostly to its edges. She is pulled backwards or drawn into the corners, as if kept out of the empty centre by some unseen force.

Immacolata tantalises with the mystery of its significance. What does it all mean? Is there a story behind its troubling silences? In fact, Meaden provides an accompanying essay, intended to be read after the performance, which does explain much of what we see – and gives the work’s air of sadness a touching specificity.
★★★★
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

COMEDY
Blak Out: An Indigenous Comedy Showcase
Trades Hall, until October 4

Blak Out is an ideal comedy show to see early at Fringe. It offers a range of performers delivering a taste of what they offer, leaving the audience hungry to seek them out elsewhere at the festival. The featured comedians hail from all over the country, and with a mix of four performers each night there is a satisfying variety of styles.

When I attended, Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi performer Jacob Keed opened with a laconic storytelling style to ease the audience in, followed by Gamilaroi comic Ben Moodie. His material skewed darker with quick jabs that met their mark. Ngarrindjeri actor/producer/comedian Kimmie Lovegrove’s personal material offered a tempting preview of the material in her solo show, which will open later in Fringe.

Kamilaroi performer Cameron Ribbons, the MC for the evening and the closing act, stole the show on this night by hitting a sweet spot of storytelling and punchy jokes. His re-enactment of crocodile spotting was the perfect crescendo.
★★★
Reviewed by Lefa Singleton Norton

DANCE
Weichen Cui | In Green, In White
Dancehouse, until October 3

The Chinese folk legend of Lady White Snake is forever shedding one skin for another. The most recent retellings shift the focus from White Snake’s mortal lover to her demonic servant, Green Snake, recasting the bond between mistress and maid in terms of enduring female friendship and homoerotic desire.

Choreographer Weichen Cui explores this queer transformation in a new duet with Jiawen Feng. At first, the performers are silhouetted behind separate screens, isolated, wearing costumes informed by tradition. As if reflecting the evolution of the story, the two figures are gradually brought together – culminating in a final serpentine tangle of limbs.

There are interesting moments, such as the use of waacking to playfully disrupt a fan dance. But overall, the episodic structure feels slow and over-formal, arresting the flows of desire it seeks to release. It might also be a little long – compressed to half an hour, this duet could bring its strongest moments into more volatile contact.
★★★
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

DANCE
Joyce Liu | INTERLINK_SYSTEM
Dancehouse, until October 3

Joyce Liu stands before us in the gloom, a tangle of red wires trailing from one arm, fingers twitching. Finally, we get it: she is actually controlling the soundscape, summoning jackhammer bursts and ominous bass drones from a body that barely seems to move. As the noise intensifies, four creatures wake inside a plastic greenhouse behind her. They claw at its walls, tearing them open. Free at last, the juddering young humanoids – all in their underwear – begin feverishly coupling in a sort of grotesque orgy-of-Doctor-Moreau.

Liu – also director and choreographer – builds a convincingly creepy laboratory atmosphere, with smoke and wildly sweeping lights lending urgency to the action. There’s also some irony, even comedy, in the monstrous debauch – though it does go on and on.

I do think, however, we could have stayed with that opening image of the human wired for sound a little longer, perhaps giving the idea of an interlinked system more room to unfold – before rushing into the bioengineered bacchanal.
★★★
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

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