Possession The Substation   Another astute and gorgeously calibrated piece of programming from The Substation, Possession arrives like a flare in the dark: an operatic salon that is intimate in scale yet thunderous in ambition. Already sold out across its two-performance premiere, this second collaboration from mezzo-soprano Ruth Strutt, director Adam Player and pianist Michael Curtain makes a compelling case for a return season. The premise is electrifying. Three legendary queer historical figures are conjured through music: the blazing martyrdom of Joan in Rossini’s Giovanna d’Arco , the aching lyricism of Donizetti’s Saffo , and the defiant militancy of Dame Ethel Smyth, whose compositions fuelled the British Suffragette movement. What could have been a recital becomes instead a dramaturgically shaped odyssey - a searing meditation on womanhood, agency, art and rebellion. The Substation’s bunker-like architecture proves an inspired setting. The space holds sound with a kind of muscular containment; it feels both subterranean and sacred. The audience enters to find Strutt already present - utterly still, draped in a rich red cloth. She is icon and offering, monument and question mark. As Possession  unfolds, the cloth gives way to a full sequinned gown: glamour revealed from austerity, spectacle born of sacrifice. It is a simple visual transformation, but in Player’s restrained direction it resonates powerfully. Design elements are spare yet considered. A box functions as stage, altar, dock and barricade. Behind Strutt, the venue’s video wall projects imagery and surtitles, lending a contemporary edge that offsets the historical material. The use of projection never overwhelms; rather, it frames and contextualises. We are reminded that these women’s voices echo forward into our own moment. What elevates Possession is its architecture of sound. Recorded spoken text threads between the arias - fragments of biography, declarations, reflections - creating a polyphonic texture in which music and memory collide. The spoken word is not explanatory filler; it operates as rupture and release, allowing Strutt to pivot from narrator to embodiment in an instant.  She is a terrific actor! Vocally, Strutt is formidable. On the big stage she commands; up close she calibrates. There is no excess gesture, no indulgence. In Rossini’s Joan, the voice cuts bright and urgent, carrying a tensile steel that suggests faith weaponised. Donizetti’s Sappho brings a different colour: molten, bruised, suspended between ecstasy and annihilation. And in Smyth, Strutt unleashes something altogether more insurgent - rhythm sharpened, consonants biting, the music propelled by a political pulse. Crucially, Michael Curtain is not mere accompanist but co-conspirator. His playing is muscular and alert, capable of swelling into orchestral grandeur before receding to a conspiratorial hush. The partnership between voice and piano feels lived-in and elastic, each responding to the other’s breath. Director Adam Player resists operatic bombast in favour of clarity. The staging trusts the music, trusts the audience, and - most importantly - trusts Strutt. The result is a work that feels both distilled and expansive. In a time when opera can struggle to reconcile scale with intimacy, Possession  offers a persuasive answer: shrink the orchestra, sharpen the dramaturgy, and let the voice blaze. The evening becomes less a recital of arias than a reclamation. Joan, Sappho, Smyth - women historically mythologised, marginalised or misunderstood - are gathered not as relics but as living provocations. The title proves apt. These figures possess the stage; Strutt is possessed by them; and, by the final note, the audience feels possessed too - by music, by history, by the fierce insistence that art and rebellion are inseparable. Sold out already, Possession  deserves a longer life. In The Substation’s concrete cavern, opera finds not only resonance but revolution. Review by Kate Gaul

Selene The Substation From the internationally award-winning team behind ORPHEUS  and sibling to the acclaimed HELIOS , comes SELENE  - unmistakably a work from the fertile imagination of Wright & Grainger, this time written with and placed - gloriously - in the hands of Megan Drury. The title gestures toward the Greek goddess of the moon, but like so much in this piece, it is a beautiful feint. The story centres instead on Selene’s daughter, Pandia - goddess of the full moon - though any expectation of a tidy mythology lesson is swiftly dissolved. As with previous Wright & Grainger works, antiquity is merely the launchpad. We are catapulted into the modern world: a young girl obsessively replaying the moon landing; teenagers swimming beneath a lunar eclipse; a mismatched couple at a drive-in horror screening. Myth fractures and refracts through the prism of contemporary adolescence. (Confession: I too grew up obsessed with the first lunar landing and can confidently bore a room about Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins and the Eagle. This show understands that particular, slightly feral lunar fixation.) Drury is our guide through this orbiting constellation of images. Alone on stage - save for glowing, moon-like orbs - she conjures an entire universe. Her storytelling is rich, muscular and emotionally precise. Confidently stage in the round, Megan Drury shifts between relationships with ease - family members living and dead, friends and frenemies, lovers and almost-lovers - crafting a community around Pandia that feels utterly lived in. At key moments, audience members are invited to read lines aloud, becoming the chorus of characters, wild dogs and wolves. It is a simple device, but it deepens the sense of collective mythmaking; we are not just witnesses but participants in the tale. The narrative is lyrical yet grounded. Pandia grows up in a small English village near an ancient white chalk horse carved into the hillside - an image that anchors the show in landscape and folklore. From there, we plunge into lakes, race mopeds across dark countryside roads, dance wildly at raves, howl at the night sky, and ultimately step onto the lunar surface itself. Transitions between these worlds are aided by a propulsive, cinematic score that pulses beneath the storytelling like a heartbeat. But SELENE  is not simply an ode to youthful abandon. It is a meditation on what it means to grow up inside a body - and what happens when that body changes. Puberty, identity, desire, shame and grief swirl through the piece like tidal pull. The moon becomes both metaphor and mirror: constant yet shifting, luminous yet shadowed. Pandia is defined by orbit - family expectations, friendship hierarchies, gendered assumptions, the gravitational force of first love. The show asks quietly but insistently: what are we stuck circling? And what would it take to break free? Humour threads throughout. It is sharp, self-aware and often deliciously irreverent. Drury’s timing is impeccable. She allows moments to land, then tilts them sideways; she builds tension and releases it with a glance or perfectly weighted pause. The audience is held close, and we recognise ourselves in Pandia’s awkwardness, her yearning, her wildness. Visually and sonically, the production leans into simplicity, trusting story and performer above spectacle. It is a wise choice. Drury’s performance is magnetic - luminous without sentimentality, fierce without sacrificing vulnerability. She makes the cosmic feel intimate and the intimate feel epic. In just around an hour, SELENE achieves something quietly remarkable: we witness a girl transform into a goddess - and, in doing so, recognise the mythic proportions of our own coming-of-age stories. It is joyous, funny, heartfelt and deeply life-affirming. A radical exploding of ancient myth, yes - but also a tender excavation of the wildness inside us. Go for the mythology and moon landing. Stay for Megan Drury. Leave contemplating your own light and dark sides - and what you are still orbiting. Review by Kate Gaul Image Tenae Elise Photography

They Will Be Kings The Loading Dock   Werewolf’s remount of They Will Be Kings  at The Loading Dock arrives not as a simple reprise of its 2025 premiere, but as a work that has deepened, tightened and found new voltage in front of an audience. There is something potent about a second life in theatre - the chance to refine intention, to sharpen rhythm, to listen to what the work has become. Under the direction of Kaz Therese, this is a production that understands itself more fully and dares to go further. At its heart, They Will Be Kings  is a work about drag kings - artists who inhabit, exaggerate and interrogate masculinity - and through that transformation claim authorship over power, lineage and identity on their own fiercely constructed terms forged in dressing rooms, on dance floors, in queer community, in defiance. Therese’s direction is, as ever, incisive. They have a remarkable capacity to sculpt performance - to allow contradiction, humour and vulnerability to sit side by side. The quartet - Danica Lani, Chris McAlister, Angel Tan and Becs Blake  – here, are a tight ensemble that pulses with collective energy. Each brings a distinct texture to the stage: Lani’s grounded presence and emotional clarity, McAlister’s sharp comic timing edged with steel, Blake’s muscular theatricality, and Tan’s magnetic volatility. Together, they move as both individuals and collective. This isa community negotiating power in real time. The production’s tonal shifts are handled with confidence. One moment we are in the riotous glow of queer joy; the next, we are confronted with the quieter ache beneath it. The script resists sentimentality. It refuses to package trauma. Instead, it honours the mess: masculinity unravelled and reassembled, performance as survival strategy, as both shield and weapon. A standout performance comes from Angel Tan as Fine China. Tan commands the stage in a monologue - accompanied by live electric violin - landing as the emotional fulcrum of the evening. It is a meditation on self-construction: on carving beauty from fracture, on claiming visibility when invisibility once felt safer. The violin does not sentimentalise the moment; instead, it heightens its rawness. The effect is quietly shattering. Design plays a crucial role in this remount’s impact. Lighting designer Frankie Clark delivers a sophisticated, sculptural design that elevates the work in this modest black-box. Light here is not decorative; it crowns, exposes, sanctifies. A wash can feel like a nightclub; a single shaft can evoke a cathedral. All reinforcing the production’s interrogation of spectacle and sanctity. The sonic world is shaped by composer Gail Priest, whose score threads through the work with both pulse and restraint expanding the emotional register without overwhelming the performers’ voices. The soundscape feels alive, responsive, integral. What distinguishes this remount most powerfully is its sense of communal offering. The audience is not passive. There is a palpable exchange in the room - laughter that feels earned, silence that feels shared. In a cultural moment where queer narratives are both celebrated and contested, They Will Be Kings  feels urgent without becoming didactic. It is celebratory without ignoring precarity. Importantly, the production understands that queer joy is political. That claiming space, light, narrative - claiming kingship - is itself an act of resistance. But it also understands that such claims are fragile, hard-won and ongoing. Werewolf have not simply restaged a success; they have allowed the work to mature. Under Kaz Therese’s precise and generous direction, and in the hands of Lani, McAlister, Tan and Blake, They Will Be Kings  stands taller in its second iteration - more assured, more layered, more resonant. It is a reminder that theatre can be both rallying cry and refuge. And in this case, it is gloriously, unapologetically both. Go see this show!!! Review by Kate Gaul Image: Tanja Brukner

Perfect Arrangement The New Theatre   “Perfect Arrangement”,  written by Topher Payne in 2014 and set in 1950s America, is a play that looks backwards in order to ask contemporary questions. This production, directed and designed by Patrick Kennedy at the New Theatre, leans into that tension between period polish and present-day unease, delivering a thoughtful and well-crafted staging within the realities of community theatre. Kennedy’s direction foregrounds restraint. The play opens in the familiar idiom of mid-century domestic comedy: neighbourly dinners, clipped pleasantries, and carefully managed social rituals. The audience is invited into a world of apparent order and ease. Yet beneath this composure lie marriages built on concealment, and lives shaped by fear of exposure. Kennedy allows this tension to accumulate gradually, resisting melodrama in favour of slow, accumulating pressure. The result is a production that trusts both its material and its audience. Design plays a particularly important role in articulating the production’s ideas. Also designed by Kennedy, the set is an ingenious response to budgetary constraints. Within the limitations of a community theatre context, it looks assured and purposeful. The domestic stylised box set - neat, symmetrical, and reassuringly ‘correct’ - subtly shifts during the action, moving downstage as the play progresses. This simple but effective mechanic does more than solve spatial challenges: it becomes a conceptual gesture, reminding us that although the story is set in the past, its implications are uncomfortably close. The world of enforced conformity presses toward us, refusing to remain safely historical. Lighting design is clean and economical, supporting the action without drawing attention to itself. Sound is similarly unobtrusive, but for those attuned to it, a ticking clock underscores the action. Barely noticeable at first, it grows in significance as the stakes rise, becoming a quiet but insistent reminder of time running out - not only for the characters’ arrangements, but for the fragile equilibrium they are struggling to maintain. Amongst the actors, Brock Crammond stands out as Jim Baxter, delivering a performance of particular clarity and specificity. He fully embodies the character’s internal conflict, capturing both the warmth of Jim’s affections and the rigidity imposed by social expectation. His work grounds the play emotionally, offering a sense of what is at risk beneath the surface civility. Patrick Kennedy is a director whose work I greatly admire, particularly with his own company, Patrick Kennedy Theatre Machine, where his productions often pulse with urgency and theatrical vim. This production does not quite reach the same level of kinetic intensity, but that feels less a failure than a consequence of the material itself. “ Perfect Arrangement”  is a quieter, more mannered play, and Kennedy approaches it with appropriate care. It is an interesting and worthwhile work to have seen, especially in the context of ongoing conversations about visibility, safety, and the cost of assimilation. Though written in 2014, the play’s examination of private compromise and public performance resonates today. Kennedy’s production does not overstate these parallels, but allows them to emerge naturally, through design, pacing, and performance. What lingers is not outrage, but recognition - and the unsettling sense that the distance between then and now is far narrower than we might like to believe. Review by Kate Gaul Image: Bob Seary

Turandot Sydney Opera House   Opera Australia’s new production of Turandot arrives with the kind of visual ambition and vocal firepower audiences hope for from Puccini’s final, extravagant opera - and, while not without its inconsistencies, ultimately delivers a stirring, often thrilling theatrical experience. Most notably, this staging marks a welcome addition to Opera Australia’s roster of directors, with Ann Yee bringing a fresh, choreographic intelligence to the work. Yee’s background in movement and visual storytelling lends the production a fluidity and symbolic resonance that elevates many of the opera’s most familiar moments. Rather than relying solely on grand spectacle, she finds ways to embody the emotional architecture of the story through physical language - an approach that feels contemporary, thoughtful and often deeply poetic. This is most striking in the production’s opening image. As the curtain rises in silence on featured dancer Hoyori Maruo, the atmosphere immediately shifts into something more abstract and mythic. Maruo’s movement threads the emotional and narrative spine of the work, offering a powerful, wordless counterpoint to Puccini’s score. It is a contribution that not only enriches the storytelling but reframes Turandot as a psychological and symbolic journey rather than simply a lavish fairy tale - and one of the production’s most inspired choices. Vocally, the evening is anchored by a truly outstanding Calaf in Young Woo Kim. Possessing extraordinary volume, clarity and presence, Kim’s tenor cuts through Puccini’s dense orchestration with gold-plated brilliance. His performance combines heroic power with emotional nuance, making Calaf’s determination feel both thrilling and human. Rebecca Nash meets him with formidable strength as Turandot, bringing steely authority and dramatic intensity to the icy princess. Great to see her back with Opera Australia! Their duets crackle with tension and heat, alive with both vocal force and theatrical chemistry. Together they form the dramatic engine of the production. The supporting trio of Ping, Pang and Pong are strongly sung and energetically performed - Simon Meadows ably covering Ping on the night attended, alongside the ever-divine Michael Petruccelli as Pang and the reliably expressive John Longmuir as Pong. Vocally and individually they impress, though the conception of their characters and the staging of their extended scene proves one of the production’s weaker elements. The tonal shift here feels awkwardly handled, and the scenic setting momentarily disrupts the opera’s dramatic momentum. Visually, the production benefits greatly from Elizabeth Gadsby’s intelligent set design, making clever use of a revolve and a moving central piece, framed by walls that become canvases for Andrew Thomas Huang’s beautiful projected imagery. Genuinely, this collaboration works - the projections deepening atmosphere and emotional texture without overwhelming the performers. It is a sophisticated visual language that supports Yee’s abstract impulses while retaining narrative clarity. Costumes by David Fleischer, however, are more of a mixed bag. Some designs effectively echo the production’s mythic grandeur, while others feel conspicuously “make do” - a reminder of the financial realities facing large-scale opera in Australia today. One of the production’s great pleasures is the children’s chorus - always a treat in opera - who bring freshness, brightness and emotional resonance to the stage. While functioning beautifully as a unified ensemble, it is delightful to see flashes of individuality shine through, lending humanity and warmth to the larger spectacle. The Opera Australia adult chorus, too, is outstanding. From the opening scenes to the opera’s monumental climaxes, they perform with power, precision and emotional depth, creating a living, breathing world around the principal characters and grounding the drama in communal urgency. Overall, this Turandot may be uneven in places, but its strengths are considerable. Ann Yee’s fresh choreographic vision signals an exciting evolution in Opera Australia’s directorial landscape, while the vocal performances - particularly Young Woo Kim’s exceptional Calaf - offer moments of genuine operatic exhilaration. With its bold abstraction, stirring musicality and flashes of visual poetry, this production reminds us that even in constrained times, opera can still aim high, take risks and, more often than not, soar.   Review by Kate Gaul

Lacrima Ros Packer Theatre   Lacrima  arrives at Sydney Festival as a true festival work of scale: expansive, technically complex, politically alert, and emotionally devastating. It is theatre that understands ceremony as a surface, and labour as the truth beneath it. Conceived and directed by French director Caroline Guiela Nguyen, Lacrima  asks a deceptively simple question: what labour lies beneath ceremony?  This is a postcolonial tale from inside the world of haute couture. The production traces the making of a single wedding dress for British royalty, following the delicate threading of pearls, the painstaking embroidery, and the relentless pursuit of perfection demanded by power that never shows its face. The dress becomes a dramaturgical vessel - at once an object of beauty, continuity, and national symbolism, and a site of extraction, pressure, and quiet harm. In a white robed room with a dominant screen amongst others, at its centre and workbenches lining the walls, the play lifts the veil on the true cost of fashion. Nguyen’s great skill is to refuse a single point of view. Instead, the stage becomes a living chorus: multiple screens, live camera feeds offering intimate close-ups of hands at work - fabric, thread, pearls - while faces hover in fragile, human proximity. There are demands, impossible deadlines, insistence on excellence. Power is everywhere and nowhere. The production spans ateliers in Paris and Alençon, and workshops in Mumbai, creating a clear geopolitical map of the global North and global South. Luxury is consumed in one hemisphere, while pressure, exhaustion, and risk accumulate in another. Lacrima never simplifies this into a binary morality tale. Instead, it allows ambition, pride, devotion, and desire to coexist with exploitation. The system endures precisely because people care about the work. Threaded through the epic scale of the dress’s creation is a domestic story of anger, emotional abuse, and breakdown. This is not framed as an aberration but as a mirror: the same logics of pressure, silence, and endurance play out in private as in global systems of labour. Stakes rise quietly. Damage accrues not through spectacle but through repetition, proximity, and the inability to step away. Language sits at the heart of this work. Lacrima moves between French, English and Tamil, and it doesn’t smooth those differences over or translate everything for comfort. The use of multiple languages isn’t about ticking an inclusivity box; it’s how the piece is built. As Caroline Guiela Nguyen suggests, the space is shaped by the people who are present. Onstage and in the audience, people hear their own languages spoken clearly and with respect. Communities rarely centred in theatre aren’t just talked about here - they are physically present, and they actively shape the world of the play It is sometime hard to keep up – what and where to look.  It is sophisticated theatre-making that trusts its audience deeply. The cast - brilliantly, and refreshingly - is largely composed of older actors. Their presence brings gravity, history, and a sense of lived experience. These performances are restrained, exacting, and devastating in their understatement. No one is performing “victimhood”; instead, we witness competence under strain, pride under pressure, and dignity stretched thin. Ultimately, Lacrima is a searing meditation on ambition, continuity, and exploitation -on how systems persist by rendering labour invisible while fetishising its results. It is intellectually rigorous, emotionally precise, and formally bold. As festival theatre goes, this is complex, humane, and uncompromising: a work that insists we look closely at what we celebrate, and who pays for the beauty we consume.   Review by Kate Gaul

All the Fraudulent Horse Girls Old Fitz “All the Fraudulent Horse Girls” is a 60-minute equine fantasia through young girl horse culture; a fairly un-profound exploration of human loneliness and a not-so-subtle queer subtext which gives this lovely play its fizz.  Written by the ever-accomplished Michael Louis Kennedy who makes references to everything form “Black Beauty”, “Never Ending Story” and “Saddle Club” to name three … and then there’s Cormac McCarthy. I liked what he said here in an interview about the play: “It is camp in the best way imaginable; in that it's supposed to be tonally serious and doesn't quite execute it. Effectively, we wanted to tell a story of a weird, lonely girl on the autobahn to queer womanhood. To create a tone that was queer and reflective of the inner life of a pre-teen we decided we would go ham on the cultural references to build her character and demonstrate her interior life. And what better way to discuss the pain of not having physical friends than through the prism of an infinite capacity for telepathic friendships with other international weird kids.” I’m not going to recount the story but suffice to say this is a piece in 3 sections performed by three incredible actors – the beyond fabulous Janet Anderson, Shirong Wu and Caitlin A Kearney.  It is pacy and deftly directed by Jess Arthur on a makeshift stage in front of a droopy curtain. You just remember what it was to be 11 and to believe in magic powers of telepathy.  Audrey does and so she communicates with every other horse girl in the world – even those who don’t speak English. The three women take turns in playing aspects of Audrey complete with kooky hand gestures, over the top horse girl hats. The performances are skilled, the characterisation knowing.  I loved the check pastel matching costumes and inventive low-tech and low-cost fringed denim (set and costumes by Paris Bell). Memorable is the campy, surreal, hallmark opening scene, which is an interview with a writer who, as a horse girl herself, has written a book about the “divinity of horses”. It is completely outrageous, and we never return to it or the writer – superbly played by the actors with very fruity French accents. It is delicious and entirely sets the tone for the show.  I loved its confidence. To yearn for a horse girl companion, be shunned, and then attempt to steal a police horse on a school trip as a way of proving the legitimacy of her horsey obsession, she is kicked in the head and wakes to find herself in an American desert and from there she must find her way back to Australian suburbia. It is nicely subversive in that all this horse ridin’ and whip crackin’ is female centred and we never meet the big Wild West male of horse myth. This is a chaotic kaleidoscopic play that defies expectations and does so in the nicest way. Grab a drink from the bar and prepare for a fine ride on this priceless pony. Giddy-up! Kate Gaul image: Robert Catto

The Children’s Hour Old Fitz Theatre   Within the context of today’s politics and accusations of “fake news,” Tiny Dog Productions & Dead Fly Productions present a timely production of Lillian Hellman’s 1934 classic “The Children’s Hour”.  Its presentation underlines the importance of looking back to a previous time in history to find stories about a valiant struggle for truth. Set in 1937 in New England USA, with fascism on the rise in Europe, “The Children’s Hour” tells the story of two long-time friends and headmistresses, Karen and Martha, whose reputations are threatened when Mary, a difficult child, spreads a lie.  “The Children’s Hour” was extremely controversial when it was produced in 1934. It was being considered seriously for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but the judges were accused of rejecting it because of the play’s reference to the two women having an affair.  Outraged by the Pulitzer decision, the New York Drama Critic’s Circle responded by awarding its own award the next year. Without giving any spoilers, this isn’t a happy story for lesbians. It represents the time-honoured tradition of realist plays in which lesbians have no choice but to kill themselves at the end (or die otherwise tragic deaths from inoperable cancer or other deadly means). But the play isn’t “about” lesbians but was rather about “a lie.” However, The Children’s Hour  has always been discussed as one of the first American plays with lesbian content.   This production at the Old Fitz (directed by Kim Hardwick) is set firmly in the 1930s. The cast use American accents with various de grees of proficiency (Accents/dialect coach: L inda Nicholls-Gidley).  The setting itself is quite dreamy with a backdrop of hand painted delicious gauzes by Emelia Simcox.  Jimi Rawlings lights the show with sensitivity and as we get into the darker aspects of the story the space becomes almost existential. Restrained support by Michael Huxley in the accompanying music and sound department. It's the large cast that is exciting.  A pack of younger actors playing the students are glorious and particular mention to Kim Clifton who plays the electric and scheming Mary Tilford along with Sarah Ballantyne who deftly plays her hapless victim, Rosalie. Amongst the more seasoned cast is and impressive Annie Byron who is nuanced and powerful in her seniority. Mike Booth is settling into older-man characters and let’s hope we see more of him on Sydney stages.  His work is very good.  Romney Hamilton, playing one half of the accused headmistresses, has quite authority in her role.  Jess Bell is astonishing as the troubled Martha. More critically, the play really needs a snip or two as it can meander even with the building tension around the snowballing effect of a whisper. This is where is shows its age and it’s a pity some steps were not taken to tighten the screws on an otherwise gripping realist event. What is more significant is the presentation of this play in a world where  there is still an issue of visibility when it comes to writing by women. Resurrecting neglected plays and celebrating the talents of writers like Lillian Hellman are a welcome exception to our theatrical programming. The landscape is shifting, and it is now possible to roll off a list of female playwrights in Australia.  This is worth celebrating as is acknowledging the shoulders of giants which we all stand in the decidedly macho business of the stage! Review by Kate Gaul

Furious Mattress 25A Australian playwright Melissa Reeves play “Furious Mattress” premiered in 2011.  This Legit Theatre Co. production directed by Margaret Thanos is its Sydney debut as part of the 25A program. Written back in the day when plays had an interval this two-hour stint is loosely based on the events that led to the death of a 49-year-old woman in January 1993 after her husband, and three other members of a breakaway Lutheran sect, performed an exorcism at the couple’s home at Antwerp, near Horsham. It’s a great premise and Reeves has fun playing with genre whether it is comedy and satire, naturalism, the gothic and surreal, or drama. It’s hard to get away from what is essentially the unpalatable story of a hapless husband (played shrewdly by Julian Garner) challenged by his trapped wife, Elise’s sensuality (played deliciously by Matilda Ridgway).  Enlisting the support of a duplicitous Anna the exorcist (a magnetic Alex Malone with gloriously painted nails and a to-die-for handbag) and local plumber Max (played savagely here by Shan-Ree Tan) the team not only bash bibles but bodies and some of it is hard to watch (fight choreographer Diego Retamales had done a fabulous job!). Else is slowly tortured and killed by her husband and those he enlists. “Furious Mattress” opens on an image that sets up everything perfectly – a chair askew with rope hanging from one arm, a lifeless body in a bed, the faint buzz of flies and two sweaty humans holding bibles.  The rest of the action explains what has happened by going forward and backwards in time. This production sets the action in one room dominated by a bed in which the dead wife, Else, lies for much of the play.  Designed by Angelina Daniel the room is padded foam on both floors and walls… a reference to an ancient, padded room?  A skeletal structure of wall uprights and cross bars suggest a gaol. The play can be read as a critique of the patriarchy and religious zealots but I am not certain what Reeves intention is here. Does it show us anything new and do we really need to see these people behaving badly? At one point late in proceedings a giant creature emerges from the actual mattress and attacks or fucks the exorcist (not sure which) amidst flashing lights and appropriate sounds. Kudos to Harry Milas (magic consultant) who presumably created and renders this moment of theatrical transformation.  It does suggest that the writer might have made more of this imaginative assessment of her subject to great effect.  In its naturalistic moments – although well rendered – the play is plodding. There is a kind of hint that the company knows or feels that the extraordinary is required to make this work – but it comes across as mildy exaggerated Aussie accents and not-quite-B-grade-enough aesthetic to land.  And the play never delves into the whys and wherefores or goes beyond the surface of strange human behaviour but stays safely “funny” - which is infuriating. A top notch team deliver a hit and miss Australian revival and if for no other reason it is great to see Melissa Reeves work onstage. Review by Kate Gaul Image: Robert Catto

Dear Elena Sergeevna Old Fitz   A 1980s Soviet drama in an Australian Premiere, “Dear Elena Sergeevna” is presented by Last Waltz Productions, directed by Clara Voda. Lyudmila Razumovskaya is a Russian playwright. She received a commission from the Ministry of Culture to write a play about ‘difficult teenagers’ and created “Dear Elena Sergeevna”. Rejected at the time by the ministry it has now played all over the world. Four students drop a birthday surprise on their teacher Elena, but the true intention of their visit is unveiled when they attempt to persuade her to hand over the key to the safe where their exam papers are being kept. For the sake of their academic progress, they must falsify their scores; for the sake of their futures, excuses are made to justify their actions. The teacher finds herself in a predicament when her students begin coercing her. To stop them from making further mistakes, Elena stands firm and refuses to compromise. They are stuck in deadlock as night draws in, and the students suggest a shockingly deplorable deal as their last reso rt . Politics, compromise, power, violence – this play has everything. So, what to make of this modest production presented late night at Old Fitz?  There is no doubt this is a cast of skilled actors.  The chosen text seems a combination of something that was written by the playwright (and translated) and parts that seem fully improvised. The result is a mish mash of delivery styles – some of which is completely inaudible.  Coupled with staging that ignores any intelligent sight line so that action is obscured this is a tricky production to take seriously.  I am guessing this is all a nod to “naturalism” and the result is artless.  We know from the moment the students enter the space that they are up to no good – there is no unfolding of action, tension or revelation.  Except for the inevitable undisciplined violence which felt dangerous in all the wrong ways. The two women in the production Madeline Li and Teodora Matovic are stand outs as they have moments where we see something deeper and more personal in their work. Review by Kate Gaul Image: Noah David Perry

Snakeface 25A Belvoir Fruitbox Theatre present writer, performer Aliyah Knight in “Snakeface”. This is an ambitious 90-minute monologue traversing myth, coming of age, sexual abuse, condemnation, and transformation.  Aliyah Knight is a charismatic presence who draws us to this complex work. The writing is poetic – sometimes arresting with its crystal-clear imagery, sometime opaque, overstated. “Snakeface”, the title, refers to the deadly, snake-haired Medusa of Greek myth. Medusa, one of the most infamous figures in Greek mythology, has long been a symbol of fear, danger, and power. Best known for her serpent-covered head and deadly gaze that turns people into stone, she is typically regarded as a monstrous female figure. However, if we consider Medusa through the lens of masculine objectification, a deeper and more complex narrative emerges, revealing how her portrayal reflects broader themes of power, control, and the male gaze.   “Snakeface” transforms Medusa into a victim, made into a monster by sexual violence.  Along with the text there are moments of frenetic dance (movement director Fetu Taku) behind a central dark screen.  This is striking and leans into subject matter and feeling the text cannot navigate. Possibly the stronger part of the performance once the context is established.  The central screen also acts as a projection surface onto which oblique words and fragments of text are projected. They were hard to read (in terms of legibility) and when considered with the spoken and physical text are possibly redundant in an already overstuffed production of a non-liner story.  A block of what looks like stone, but we discover is wet clay (with numerous religious overtones) – becomes an original metaphor for the body, its sexual encounters, white bodies of lovers, a covering of shame, revulsion as wet handfuls are slapped, nudged and spread on Knight’s body. Our central character, Maddie, is also a sculptor and although nothing really comes of the clay it is an intriguing and unusual element to see on stage.   The work feels authentic, visceral in its telling of growing up black, queer, discovering oneself through high school crushes, sexual trauma, white Australia, art. “Snakeface” offers us an expansive canvas.  Director Bernadette Fam and. Associate Director Rachel Seeto head a large creative team who orchestrate this lively story of twists and turns.  The work does feel overly long, and one wonders of losing some of the repetition might have made for a more searing experience. There is joy in this creative work, and it is exciting to see an imaginative and deeply personal work from artists who intersect marginalised identities (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+) experimenting with form and content. Hearing from new voices opens possibilities for others and validates lived experience.  The team provide resources to support and help audience process the material they have witnessed.   While “Snakeface” and other feminist readings have reclaimed Medusa as a symbol of female empowerment, her dominant representation in mythology and media reflects a legacy of masculine control and objectification, a story in which she is punished for her autonomy and ultimately reduced to a tool for male use. I wasn’t convinced that the Medusa of this poetic rendering had enough pay off, perhaps a clearer dramatic journey may have helped us through the maze of experience. Review by Kate Gaul Image by Abraham de Souza

Taiwan Season: Trace of Belief Chun Dance Assembly Dance Base “Trace of Belief” choreographed by Hsieh Yi-Chun, is a subtle, mesmerising performance that incorporates ballet, tai-chi, salsa, bhangra and kathak in a dreamlike melange. “Trace of Belief”, which blends these dance techniques with a signature dance style Hsieh Yi-Chun is pursuing— low-centred movements paired with fluid circular motions reminiscent of flowing water. Embracing diverse dance styles and various cultural identities, Chun Dance embodies the “glocal” spirit—both deeply rooted in local traditions and globally engaged. connecting with audiences worldwide. Six performers wearing blue and white loose pants and flesh-coloured tops move imperceptibly to begin.  Sounds of waves, bells, birdsong surround them, and the lighting is evocative and is as much a reason to see this production as the movement itself. This is an elegant work.  The consummate dancers have complete control. The compositions of bodies, colour and light is delicious.  The discipline embodied in the piece holds us.  Each movement is precise, exacting. It all feels ritualistic, meditative and then bursts into the ecstatic.  The audience are free to write their own response – whether religious or secular onto the event.  There is not obvious narrative. The title is a frame through which to experience this delightful work. Where do we put our faith?  And in what? The final section features Hsieh Yi-Chun herself, stripped down to her flesh coloured under cloths as if suggesting that we should shed all that is unnecessary to find our own trace of belief.   An outstanding company which is a pleasure to encounter.  Recommended!   Review by Kate Gaul