Tag: Play

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METRO: Travelling The Rails Of Grief

REVIEW BY JESSICA FANWONG EDITED BY CHARLOTTE FRASER Presented by APK Productions as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival 2025, Todd Kingston’s haunting new postmodern play, METRO is a raw urban surrealist meditation on memory, grief and mental health. Set on a Melbournian train carriage (with brief dips into a parallel surrealist dreamscape), the show draws an analogy between a train ride and grief. Each of … Continue reading METRO: Travelling The Rails Of Grief

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Quelched! The Price of Building a Phallic Empire

REVIEWED BY JESSICA FANWONG EDITED BY CHARLOTTE FRASER Presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2025, the University of Melbourne Musical Theatre Association (UMMTA) presented a delightfully absurdist new work (slash dating app with the quirkiest app sound) Quelched! Written by Conor Boussiotas and directed by James Pringle, this Fringe run is the full-show debut of Quelched! following its development session at UMMTA’s Sitzprobe … Continue reading Quelched! The Price of Building a Phallic Empire

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Curiouser and Curiouser: JCH’s Wonderful Wonderland 

REVIEW BY POPPY ELFICK EDITED BY CHARLOTTE FRASER I walk into the Carlton Scout Hall and find my seat in front of the quaint stage. Before us are two sets of door frames – one full sized on the stage and a smaller set on the ground in front – and a tree wrapped in fairy lights. Here is the beginning of our trip down … Continue reading Curiouser and Curiouser: JCH’s Wonderful Wonderland 

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Has Anyone Checked On The Sixth Formers? Lunatix’s Punk Rock

REVIEW BY ELLA CALLOW-SUSSEX EDITED BY EMMA PARFITT Punk Rock is a play by British playwright Simon Stephens, best known for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. First performed in 2009, it follows the lives of seven private school kids in sixth form – their equivalent of Year 12 – as they prepare for, or neglect, their A level mock exams. … Continue reading Has Anyone Checked On The Sixth Formers? Lunatix’s Punk Rock

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International House’s Clue: On Stage Is A Play That Plays

REVIEW BY CHARLOTTE FRASER EDITED BY OLIVIA DI GRAZIA Picture this: you enter the Guild Theatre, transformed into an early 20th century manor house evocative of an Agatha Christie-esque world. Feeling brave, or perhaps foolish, you sit in the first row. You’re warned about the close audience proximity, the themes of murder and mystery and the unpredictability of live performance. A giddy air of anticipation … Continue reading International House’s Clue: On Stage Is A Play That Plays

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Audience Please Make the Right Decision Challenge Failed: 5 Locktin

REVIEW BY BRONTE LEMAIRE EDITED BY EMMA PARFITT It’s always a pleasure rocking up to the Motley Bauhaus, especially during a night buzzing with theatre festivities. At 9pm the place is packed with Netherworld Festival shows. There’s a guy with wings at the bar, Snape is wandering around telling dad jokes, and I’m pretty sure someone’s upstairs with very little to cover themself–or perhaps nothing … Continue reading Audience Please Make the Right Decision Challenge Failed: 5 Locktin

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Numa and Karl: A Profoundly Emotional History

REVIEW BY AZMY AZURITE EDITED BY EMMA PARFITT “Are you sure you’re ready for the backlash?” “Of course!” “He’s not.” Numa and Karl: The Extraordinary Man That He Was is the story of Karl Henrich Ulrichs, the first man in history to ever come out as gay. He invented his own word for the phenomenon—urning, its roots in Aphrodite’s epithet Urania, which emphasises Aphrodite’s more … Continue reading Numa and Karl: A Profoundly Emotional History

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Earnestly Stylish Fun – Camberwell Grammarians’ The Importance of Being Earnest

REVIEW BY TOM WORSNOP EDITED BY EMMA PARFITT Old Camberwell Grammarian Theatre Company’s staging of The Importance of Being Earnest offers a visually delightful rendition of Oscar Wilde’s iconic farce about two upper-class bachelors, named Jack and Algernon. Each are pretending to be a fictional man named ‘Ernest’ in order to win over two women they’ve fallen in love with – Gwendolen and Cecily respectively. … Continue reading Earnestly Stylish Fun – Camberwell Grammarians’ The Importance of Being Earnest

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RMIT Redacts’ Twelve Angry Jurors: A Thought-Provoking Take On A Classic

REVIEW BY AKSHITA BENNY EDITED BY EMMA PARFITT The tension is already palpable upon entering the confines of the Kaleide Theatre, when the voice over of the judge plays in the space and you can hear from the left the voice of a guard. Twelve jurors file to the stage from the door on stage left, fanning themselves and complaining about the heat. When the … Continue reading RMIT Redacts’ Twelve Angry Jurors: A Thought-Provoking Take On A Classic

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6 Guys An Immigrant Trans Person of Colour Will Date in Melbourne: A Bombastic Success

REVIEW BY TARAS SCURRY EDITED BY EMMA PARFITT This play was simply outstanding. There’s no other way to start the dialogue about this performance than to emphasise just that. It’s quick-witted, well-researched and a performance that has both backbone and expressiveness.  The theatre was the very encapsulation of an intimate setting.  It is a small brick room upstairs at the Motley Bauhaus, with a stage … Continue reading 6 Guys An Immigrant Trans Person of Colour Will Date in Melbourne: A Bombastic Success

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