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An Illiad Wharf 1 At Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 1, David Wenham takes on An Iliad - Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s one-actor adaptation of The Iliad, directed by Damien Ryan. The work itself has a formidable lineage. Originally created at Seattle Repertory Theatre, An Iliad distils Homer’s vast epic -over 15,000 lines, composed in Homeric Greek in the 8th century BCE -into a solo performance. The source text, sometimes called the “Song of Ilium,” unfolds during the final weeks of the Trojan War, charting the rupture between Achilles and Agamemnon while spiralling outward to encompass the entire mythic architecture of the siege: its origins, its inevitabilities, its aftermath. It is, fundamentally, a poem about the recurrence of violence and how war loops through history, retold and re-lived. The staging of this production leans into a now-familiar aesthetic of the “found” space: the Poet (David Wenham) enters an already worn, emptied world, dragging behind him a modest cart of belongings from which he extracts objects to stand in for the story’s shifting elements (design Charles Davis). It gestures, perhaps, toward Mother Courage and Her Children - that image of survival through accumulation - but here the metaphor never quite coheres. The objects remain resolutely literal, their symbolic charge underdeveloped. What could accumulate into theatrical poetry instead feels illustrative. The conceit never fully transforms the space; it stays grounded, practical, and ultimately limits the work’s capacity to lift into something more mythic or dangerous. This adaptation leans heavily on Robert Fagles’ translation, long celebrated for its clarity and accessibility. But “accessible” isn’t the same as alive. Here, the language sits in an uneasy middle ground: neither fully contemporary nor truly epic. What should surge instead settles. Fagles’ text, in this framing, becomes flattened - intelligible, certainly, but rhythmically inert. The poetry lands as narrative rather than incantation; information rather than invocation. And Wenham, though an actor of considerable intelligence, leans into that mode. The delivery is controlled to the point of uniformity: a measured recitation that rarely breaks open. The great engine of the story: rage, grief, terror, absurdity - demands volatility, but the tonal range feels compressed. There are too few ruptures, too few moments where the performer seems overtaken by the telling. Where the Poet is seized by Achilles’ mania or Andromache’s grief, we get modulation rather than transformation. It remains storytelling, rather than possession. This is the production’s central paradox: a work about the uncontrollable violence of history rendered in a largely controlled, even-tempered register. It’s a choice. The adaptation itself contributes to this. By framing the text as conversational and digressive, it trades the muscular propulsion of epic poetry for a looser, anecdotal rhythm (with a generous sprinkling of local references thrown in). The stakes dissipate. We are told a story about war, rather than something that enacts it in the room. What does cut through is the presence of the musician (Helena Svoboda), whose score threads a necessary unease through the evening - an undercurrent of danger and otherworldliness that the text and performance intermittently lack. Together with sound designer Brady Watkins there is something really muscular brewing here that leans into what cannot be spoken, beginning to match the terror of what is being told. There’s no question the material remains potent. The Iliad, alongside The Odyssey, is one of the foundational works of Western literature - a brutal meditation on honour, mortality, and the cyclical nature of human conflict. Its architecture is vast, its themes, inexhaustible. This production is intelligent and lucid, but too often dramatically even. An Iliad should feel barely containable, like history erupting through the body of the performer. Here, it feels carefully held. Review by Kate Gaul Image Daniel Boud

Erth’s Dinosaurs – From Hatchlings to Giants Sydney Opera House There’s something quietly radical about sitting in a theatre full of children and adults, all leaning forward in shared wonder. In an age of relentless screens and speed, Erth’s Dinosaurs - From Hatchlings to Giants  offers a different proposition: attention, curiosity, and awe. Framed as a live wildlife presentation, the work blends storytelling with science to bring prehistoric life vividly into the room. We encounter creatures both familiar and surprising  from a baby Triceratops to the wide-eyed Leaellynasaura, and the strikingly local Australovenator. The emphasis on Australian dinosaurs is a particular strength, grounding the global myth of “dinosaurs” in a specific and proudly local context. What distinguishes this production is not just the scale of the puppetry, though the larger creatures are undeniably impressive, but its transparency. The stage design is elegantly portable, never competing with the puppets themselves. Instead, it invites the audience into the act of creation: a fold-out illustrated frame, a small digital camera, simple but deft theatrical mechanisms. We see how the illusion is made, and that revelation becomes part of the delight. The dramaturgy is deceptively sophisticated. Big questions are embedded lightly within the action: could a carnivore be raised as a herbivore? Did dinosaurs sing? What happens when one gets sick? These provocations are never laboured; they emerge organically through interaction, humour, and gentle narrative turns. Crucially, the work maintains a deep respect for its young audience. Invitations onto the stage are handled with care and clarity, creating moments of genuine participation without tipping into chaos or condescension. The performers remain warm, precise, and responsive, holding the room with a confidence that allows space for unpredictability. And then there is the emotional arc. We move from lush, playful prehistoric landscapes to the looming shadow of the extinction event - a shift handled with surprising tenderness. The concept is made clear without overwhelming its audience, and importantly, the work gestures toward practical ways of thinking about and responding to loss in our own time. Rather than closing down, it opens out: extinction is not only something that happened, but something we are implicated in. Even here, the production resists spectacle for its own sake, choosing instead to frame loss in a way that is accessible without diminishing its weight. Despite featuring some of the largest creatures to walk the earth, the show is full of small, endearing details: a clumsy toddler T. rex, a gently chaotic crèche of baby dinosaurs. It is this balance, between scale and intimacy, knowledge and play, that gives the work its distinctive power. Created by Erth Visual & Physical Inc., long recognised as leaders in puppetry, this production does more than animate dinosaurs. It animates the space between generations, inviting audiences of all ages to sit together and imagine — slowly, collectively, and with delight. Review by Kate Gaul Image: Daniel Boud

Only Bones The Mill There is nowhere to hide in Only Bones . No set, no text, no narrative - just a body, a light, and a square metre of space. And yet Daniel Nodder builds something vast, strange, and quietly astonishing within it. A performer of formidable control, Nodder  draws on nearly two decades of street dance, clown training at École Philippe Gaulier, and mentorship from Thom Monckton to deliver a work that feels both rigorously crafted and completely unbound. What begins as something almost imperceptible - tiny shifts, a flicker of form - unfolds into a microscopic universe of creatures, textures and transformations. The detail is exquisite. Hands articulate with uncanny precision - fingers becoming antennae, tendrils, soft-bodied organisms. Limbs isolate, distort, disappear. The body folds and reconfigures in ways that feel at once playful, grotesque and deeply controlled. There is slapstick here, certainly -but it’s filtered through a highly refined physical language that elevates the work beyond novelty into something genuinely transporting. Nodder specialises in the in-between: where human becomes creature, where structure dissolves into sensation. The effect is mesmerising. You find yourself leaning in, recalibrating your sense of scale and possibility. This is not theatre that declares itself loudly, it draws you closer, asking you to meet it in its precision. This is singular, deeply crafted solo performance that captivates audiences through sheer physical intelligence. And with a season heading to the Edinburgh Fringe, it feels destined to travel even further. This is Fringe work in its purest form: inventive, intimate, and utterly unlike anything else. Recommended. Review by Kate Gaul

Kathy Maniura: The Cycling Man The Mill   There is something deeply satisfying about watching a character unravel in real time—particularly when that character has spent a small fortune on lycra and still can’t quite outrun himself. Kathy Maniura’s The Cycling Man  arrives in Adelaide trailing the kind of Edinburgh Fringe buzz that can feel overinflated. Here, it’s earned. This is precise, intelligent character comedy, ridiculous on the surface, quietly devastating underneath. We meet a middle-aged, newly single man clinging to identity through gear, stats, and self-mythology. He is, quite simply, a pompous git. And Maniura knows it. The brilliance lies in how finely calibrated the performance is: every gesture, every micro-shift in status, every absurd justification lands with elegant control. This is not chaos comedy,it’s engineered. The drag king lens sharpens everything. Masculinity becomes both costume and cage, and Maniura plays the tension beautifully. There’s a delicious friction between bravado and fragility; between the man he insists he is and the one quietly falling apart in front of us. And crucially, it travels. UK-inflected, yes, but the rhythms, the ego, the delusion of reinvention-through-hobby? Entirely legible to an Australian audience. You recognise this man. You may even have dated him. Are you married to him? What elevates the work beyond parody is its restraint. Maniura resists the urge to push for easy grotesque. Instead, she allows the character’s desperation to leak through the cracks, making the comedy sharper and the undercurrent more affecting. Directed with a light but attentive touch by Cecily Nash, the show maintains a tightrope balance between satire and something more human. It is, above all, very, very funny. Not in a blunt-force way, but in that sustained, accumulating rhythm where laughter builds because the world is so clearly, confidently drawn. A masterclass in character work, and a reminder that the most absurd figures are often the most recognisable. Review by Kate Gaul

Bed Bug The Crawford Room Bed Bug  is what happens when heartbreak mutates. Not a gig. Not theatre. Not quite a rave.Something messier. More intimate. Slightly unhinged. Bed Bug  is a live unravelling: a heartbreaking, experimental electronic-folk concept work that traces the collapse of a decade-long relationship and the grotesque, fascinating metamorphosis that follows. It sits in that deliciously unstable space where performance becomes emotional weather. Created by Jack Brett, with music production by DINNERLADYYY, weaving a live electronic undercurrent that shimmers, fractures and carries the work into something more volatile, Bed Bug  dissects the sticky, destructive patterns of human behaviour. Even in its darkest turns, the work remains alert to the possibility of transformation. The result is a performance that is entirely inhabited. Brett is a charismatic and deeply watchable performer. There is something both alluring and unsettling in the way he holds eye contact with the audience: intimate, exposed, slightly dangerous. He has the voice of a broken angel - tender, bruised, and capable of sudden force. On guitar, keys, loops and tin whistle, he builds a miniature epic from fragments, textures and pulses. The sound world is rich and engulfing, moving from poetic fragility to full-bodied electronic surge. The show’s references make sense: Kafka hovers here, as does the contemporary alt-pop lineage of confessional composition. But Bed Bug never feels derivative. It has its own feverish logic. Brett’s background as a music, performance and visual artist is evident in the work’s total composition, as is the breadth of his collaborative life - from Sleep Walking Animals  to his internationally touring work with storyteller Casey Jay Andrews. This is a maker who understands atmosphere and how to use it to destabilise an audience, then draw them closer. What lingers is not only the sonic sophistication — though there is plenty of that — but the sense of emotional risk. This is tricky to categorise, and all the better for it. Looking around the room, it is clearly reaching the theatrical adventurers - those audiences hungry for work that slips between genres and resists easy packaging. For me, that makes Bed Bug  exactly the kind of work a festival like this should hold close: ambitious, strange, musically arresting, and utterly unafraid of its own intensity. This is an evening of music, performance and images that will last a long time in memory. Review by Kate Gaul

Sexy Ghost Boy Upstairs at Duke of York Hotel Sexy Ghost Boy  begins with instructions. A ritual. A dare. “Begin with a circle. Work your way up, slowly. Bravely. The Macarena happens to completion. Scream.” It is ridiculous. It is precise. It is, in its own way, completely serious. From this opening invocation, the audience is initiated into a world where the absurd and the intimate collide, summoning the titular spirit: from New Zealand, an award-winning, hilariously f***able apparition who exists somewhere between clown, seducer and existential threat. Sexy Ghost Boy is less a character than a force - erratic, disarming and deeply attuned to the strange rituals that govern our bodies. Blending clowning, burlesque and performance art, the show interrogates the micro-neuroses and unspoken rules that shape our understanding of sex. It is not interested in eroticism as such, but rather in the awkward choreography that surrounds it: the hesitations, the over-performed confidence, the internal scripts we rehearse and repeat. Through a series of escalating physical and comedic sequences, Sexy Ghost Boy exposes the fragile mechanics of desire, turning them inside out with gleeful abandon. What makes the work land is its commitment to precision within chaos. The performance may feel anarchic, but it is underpinned by sharp technical control. Each gesture is calibrated, each awkward pause extended just long enough to tip into discomfort before snapping back into laughter. The audience is constantly caught between complicity and resistance, unsure whether to lean in or recoil. There is a particular pleasure in the way the performer manipulates tone. One moment, the space is filled with broad, almost childlike physical comedy; the next, it shifts into something quieter and more unsettling. The burlesque elements play deliberately with expectation, teasing the possibility of seduction before undermining it with absurdity. What emerges is a kind of anti-eroticism -desire rendered strange, clumsy and unmistakably human. There is also something distinctly generous at the core of the performance. For all its provocation and irreverence, Sexy Ghost Boy never feels cruel. Instead, it invites the audience into a shared recognition of vulnerability -the absurd lengths we go to in order to connect, to be seen, to be desired. It is also, refreshingly, difficult to categorise. Looking around the room, it’s clear the show has found its audience: theatrical adventurers of multiple identities, open to risk, absurdity and delight. That, perhaps, is what makes it such an ideal Fringe work. It resists neat definition, instead creating a space where different sensibilities can collide and coexist. There is something quietly heartening in that - an acknowledgement of the breadth of audiences willing to meet work on its own strange terms. Having already built a reputation across New Zealand, where it picked up multiple fringe awards including the Organised Chaos Award (Auckland Fringe) and the Bizarre and Charming Award (Hastings Fringe), the work arrives in Australia with a clear sense of its own identity. It is confident in its strangeness, unapologetic in its tone, and finely tuned to the rhythms of live audience engagement. What lingers after the performance is not a single image or moment, but a sensation: of having been pulled through something unpredictable and oddly revealing. The show does not offer neat conclusions or moral resolutions. Instead, it leaves us with the echo of its central provocation - what if the rituals we cling to around sex and intimacy are themselves the strangest performance of all? Sexy Ghost Boy  is chaotic, disarming and unexpectedly incisive. A work that understands that sometimes the most honest way to approach desire is not through seduction, but through laughter - and the courage to look directly at the absurdity of being human. Review by Kate Gaul

KIN   The Crawford Room Rooted in dancer and musician Erin Fowler’s exploration of her Irish ancestry, KIN  is an intimate and elemental work-in-progress that sits somewhere between music gig, ritual and dance theatre. It is a piece shaped by grief, ancestral dislocation and the uneasy terrain of Australian cultural in-betweenness. In its current form, it already holds a quiet power. At the centre of the work is a yearning to understand inheritance: what has been passed down, what has been lost, and what it might mean to belong on this land as someone shaped by colonial histories. KIN  asks these questions with sincerity and care, resisting easy resolution. Instead, it offers fragments - songs, gestures, stories, invocations - that gather into an evocative meditation on memory, womanhood and cultural absence. Much of the work’s force comes from its music. The three-part harmonies of Erin Fowler, Tess Fowler and Jessica Bigg are solid, haunting and deeply affecting. Their voices seem to hold both personal grief and something more collective: a longing for connection, for lineage, for forms of cultural continuity that feel real rather than inherited through cliché. The work explicitly reaches beyond the familiar shorthand of white Australian identity - “footy, snags and Aussie larrikins” - in search of something more meaningful, more truthful, and more embodied. This search is where KIN  i s at its most compelling. It gives presence to the “White Cultural Void” without becoming abstract or didactic. Instead, the themes are grounded in the body: in women’s voices, women’s rituals, and the subtle ways history lodges itself physically and emotionally. The embodied movement language is evocative and restrained, allowing gesture and presence to do the work rather than over-explaining. There is a sense throughout that the performers are not illustrating an argument but living inside a set of real, unresolved questions. Detailed narration helps thread these ideas together, and the personal storytelling is genuinely engaging. Fowler’s reflections open broader questions about shame, inheritance and habitation: why we are here, how we came to be here, and how we might live more honestly in relation to the land beneath us. These are big questions, and KIN  does not pretend to solve them. Its strength lies instead in its willingness to sit with discomfort, uncertainty and longing. As a work-in-progress, KIN  already possesses a clear tonal world. Its textures are carefully layered, and its shifts between song, speech and movement feel organic. The invitation for audiences to join in moments of shared song is particularly effective, creating brief but potent experiences of collective resonance. These moments open the work outward, transforming it from private reflection into something communal. What is already present is strong: an evocative performance language, a compelling personal frame, and a sincere engagement with difficult cultural and historical material. KIN  is a thoughtful and moving offering, intimate in scale, but expansive in the questions it asks. It leaves a lingering impression, not because it arrives at certainty, but because it invites us into the ache of searching. Keenly felt and genuinely engaging, this is a work worth watching as it continues to grow. Review by Kate Gaul

ODIE The Austral Emrys Quin’s ODIE is a ferocious, high-octane solo work that barrels through Australian masculinity, addiction, and identity with both savage humour and unsettling clarity. What begins as a larrikin yarn about State of Origin culture quickly mutates into something far darker and more psychologically fractured - part epic poem, part descent narrative, part cultural autopsy. Quin performs as Odie, a Queensland everyman whose voice is equal parts charisma and catastrophe. From the opening moments - inviting the audience into a drunken, blokey chant - the show establishes a seductive complicity. We laugh. We recognise the type. And then, almost imperceptibly, the ground begins to shift. The script is linguistically electric. Quin’s writing crackles with invention: dense, rhythmic, often grotesquely funny. His metaphors veer from the absurd to the poetic in a single breath - Sydney as a “diamond on a nipple,” violence as spectacle, empathy as “a pipe of lead.” This is language that doesn’t sit still; it lunges, spirals, and detonates. At times, the sheer velocity of ideas threatens to overwhelm, but that excess feels intentional, mirroring Odie’s overstimulated, substance-fuelled psyche. Structurally, the play unfolds across five acts -Violence, Substance, Prejudice, Gambling, Reckoning -each escalating Odie’s internal and external collapse. What is particularly striking is Quin’s theatrical imagination. A rugby match becomes mythic warfare; a yacht party morphs into a grotesque bacchanal with painted figures crawling off the walls; a casino transforms into a predatory organism devouring its patrons. These sequences are vivid, hallucinatory, and deeply stageable, offering a performer a playground of physical and visual possibility. Yet beneath the surrealism lies a sharply observed critique. ODIE  skewers a distinctly Australian mythology: mateship, blokiness, casual racism, and the normalisation of gambling and substance abuse. The character of the “Porklord”, a grotesque embodiment of corporate greed and nationalist hypocrisy, is particularly effective, exposing the commodification of identity and sport with biting satire. Importantly, Quin does not let Odie off the hook. The play’s greatest strength is its refusal to romanticise its protagonist. Odie’s charm is inseparable from his cowardice, his humour from his complicity. Moments of recognition, particularly in the scenes with Tangaroa Katoa, are quietly devastating, revealing the cost of silence and the ease with which prejudice is excused as “banter.” The final act pivots into something unexpectedly intimate. Stripped of spectacle, Odie is forced to confront the truth about Penny, a relationship he has mythologised to avoid facing his own failures. This revelation lands with real emotional weight, grounding the play’s earlier excesses in something painfully human. The closing interaction, poised between despair and the possibility of change, resists easy resolution. It is messy, unresolved, and powerful for it. As a solo performance, ODIE demands extraordinary stamina and precision. The performer must navigate rapid tonal shifts, embody multiple voices (including Odie’s own internal organs), and sustain a relentless pace. When it lands, the effect is exhilarating; when it tips into overload, it risks losing clarity. A slightly tighter calibration of rhythm - particularly in the middle sections - could allow key ideas to resonate more fully. ODIE is an audacious and distinctive work. It is rare to encounter a script that is this linguistically muscular, this theatrically ambitious, and this culturally incisive all at once. Quin has crafted a piece that is as entertaining as it is confronting holding up a mirror to an Australia that is both familiar and deeply unsettling. This is not a comfortable night at the theatre. But it is a compelling one. Reveiw by Kate Gaul

How Not to Make It In America Holden St Theatre The mythology of the young artist heading to New York to make it big is one that theatre returns to again. Emily Steel’s How Not to Make It in America , presented at by Theatre Republic, begins squarely within that familiar dream: a hopeful Australian actor arrives in Manhattan determined to carve out a life on the stage. Set in 2001, the story follows Matt, a naïve young performer buoyed by the encouragement of an acting teacher who tells him his talent is “like gold dust.” What follows is less a success story than a catalogue of missteps. His high-school sweetheart leaves him, his visa runs out, and the city that once seemed full of promise becomes increasingly inhospitable. Complicating matters further is the historical moment in which the story unfolds. Matt’s personal struggles occur against the backdrop of the September 11 attacks - an event that irrevocably altered New York and the world beyond it. The play positions this seismic moment as part of the landscape through which Matt’s journey unfolds, but the relationship between the global tragedy and the protagonist’s personal story remains underdeveloped. Performed by James Smith, the production asks much of its central performer. Smith shifts between an array of characters using small physical adjustments and vocal changes to sketch the various figures who populate Matt’s New York experience. Acting teachers, fellow performers, landlords and acquaintances appear briefly before giving way to the next encounter. Smith handles the transitions with precision, demonstrating the kind of theatrical dexterity that solo storytelling demands. The script itself also moves confidently through a sequence of anecdotes and encounters, building a portrait of a young man navigating the bewildering realities of life in a city that rarely slows down. Yet for all its structural skill, the material occasionally feels tethered to an earlier moment in theatre-making. The tone and narrative shape - the hapless dreamer outside Australia, the awkward encounters, the string of humiliations that become comic set pieces - have the flavour of a well-worn older Fringe format. The story’s perspective on ambition and failure, while sincere, sometimes carries the sense of having been shaped in a different theatrical era. More challenging is the construction of the central character. Matt is portrayed as impulsive, often naïve to the point of foolishness, and frequently oblivious to the consequences of his actions. While such traits can form the basis of compelling comic anti-heroes, here they create a certain distance between character and audience. It becomes difficult to invest emotionally in a protagonist whose choices repeatedly undermine the sympathy the story seeks to generate. The shadow of September 11 further complicates the narrative. The attacks appear as a contextual marker - a moment that alters Matt’s trajectory - yet the script does little to explore the emotional or social reverberations of the event itself. As a result, the historical gravity of the moment sits somewhat awkwardly beside the personal misadventures of the central character. That imbalance occasionally leaves the audience unsure where the show’s emotional centre lies. Is this primarily a coming-of-age comedy about youthful ambition, or a reflection on a moment when the world changed irreversibly? Whether that memory resonates fully with contemporary audiences may depend on how much patience they have for a protagonist whose lessons arrive slowly - and whose dreams, like the city he hopes to conquer, prove far less forgiving than he imagined. Review by Kate Gaul

The Soaking of Vera Shrimp Holden St Theatre There is something quietly disarming about a show that announces itself as both a science lesson and a story about grief. The Soaking of Vera Shrimp , a 40-minute solo work leans into that curious combination with a gentle confidence that suits the intimate scale of the production. Performed in one of Adelaide Fringe’s smaller venues, the show unfolds like a story shared across a kitchen table rather than a conventional theatrical event. The space is close, the atmosphere informal, and the audience quickly becomes part of the imaginative world being constructed. The premise is wonderfully strange. During a monumental rainstorm, Vera Shrimp discovers she possesses an unusual gift: she can read raindrops. Each drop of water, having travelled across the world and touched countless surfaces, has absorbed fragments of human emotion. By examining the water, Vera can sense these feelings - grief, joy, anger, longing - carried invisibly within the rain. At first the device feels almost whimsical, a charming piece of pseudo-scientific invention that allows the performer to weave together small stories about the lives contained within a single storm. The show moves fluidly between playful explanation and narrative speculation, inviting the audience to consider the emotional residue that might linger in something as ordinary as rainfall. But the premise soon takes on greater weight. As Vera’s own family falls apart the ability to read emotional traces in water becomes less of a curiosity and more of a burden. Suddenly the world is saturated with feeling, and the boundaries between scientific curiosity and emotional survival begin to blur. It is a compelling metaphor, and one that lends itself well to the show’s blend of storytelling and performance. The structure moves between demonstration and confession: part lecture, part personal account, part imaginative experiment. The performer delivers the material with unmistakable commitment. This is a performance style that leans unapologetically toward what might be called capital-A Acting - emotional clarity, carefully shaped gestures, and moments of heightened feeling that are presented directly and without irony. For some audiences that sincerity will be exactly the point. The show’s emotional openness is central to its appeal, particularly within the cosy intimacy of the venue where every shift in tone feels amplified. The themes of love, grief and resilience are handled with sincerity throughout. The show occasionally edges toward sentimentality. The performance style leans strongly into feeling, which may not appeal to viewers who prefer a lighter touch or greater understatement. Yet the production’s generosity is difficult to resist. There is something refreshing about a piece that embraces its own earnestness so openly. The creative team appear less interested in irony than in the simple act of sharing a story about perseverance and emotional connection. Within the context of the Adelaide Fringe - a festival filled with spectacle, comedy and experimentation - The Soaking of Vera Shrimp  offers a gentler kind of theatrical encounter. It is small in scale, sincere in tone, and anchored by a performer clearly invested in the material they are delivering. For audiences willing to surrender to its sentiment and imaginative premise, the show provides a sweet and quietly moving theatrical experience. Like the raindrops Vera studies so carefully, it gathers small fragments of feeling and invites us to notice them. Review by Kate Gaul

My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me on Instagram: A Guide To Trans-generational Road-Tripping The Mill Some stories arrive onstage with a clear theatrical architecture. Others unfold more like a long car journey: winding, unexpected, occasionally uncomfortable, and ultimately intimate. Yoz Mensch’s My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me on Instagram: A Guide To Trans-generational Road-Tripping  belongs firmly to the latter category - a solo storytelling work that travels lightly but lands with surprising emotional weight. The premise is deceptively simple. Mensch and their grandfather embark on a road trip from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands. One grandparent, one grandchild, and an unspoken truth travelling quietly between them. The journey becomes both literal and emotional terrain: motorway service stations, anonymous hotel rooms, awkward silences, and small moments of shared humanity that gather significance over time. Drawn from hundreds of real Instagram Stories posted during the trip, the performance cleverly uses the digital trace of the journey as both narrative device and emotional counterpoint. What was publicly shared online - the landscapes, the jokes, the passing oddities of travel - becomes the scaffolding for a more complicated private story. What remains unsaid, or deliberately hidden, begins to pulse beneath the surface. Many in the audience will already sense the central tension: this is also a coming-out story. Yet what is striking about Mensch’s approach is the intelligence and restraint with which that thread is handled. The revelation is not positioned as a theatrical climax or dramatic confrontation. Instead, it exists as a quiet but constant presence, a truth carried in the car alongside a phone, snacks and overnight bags. Mensch treats the subject with notable restraint, allowing the complexity of intergenerational love to sit alongside the anxiety of disclosure without forcing the narrative toward easy catharsis. Mensch is an engaging and quietly charismatic storyteller. There is a remarkable ease with which they invite the audience into the world of the journey, speaking with the relaxed intimacy of someone recounting a memory to friends rather than delivering a carefully constructed theatrical monologue. That conversational tone proves disarming. The audience leans in. What emerges gradually is not simply a travelogue but a meditation on generational distance - the curious tenderness and strain that can exist between people who love each other deeply yet inhabit very different worlds. Much of the show’s charm lies in the lovingly recreated characters encountered along the road. Motel clerks mainly, each appears with gentle comic detail and some could be extended into much longer scenes. Mensch sketches them with quick physical shifts and subtle vocal changes, building a gallery of vivid roadside encounters. There is a consummate performance skill at work here that sneaks up on the audience. What initially appears casual and improvisational reveals itself as carefully calibrated storytelling. Beats land precisely. Moments of humour are allowed to bloom before quietly curdling into something more reflective. Yoz is a natural clown and their ability to perfectly time a pause and allow laughter to ripple (or, indeed tears to flow) is one of the show’s greatest strengths. At its heart, My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me on Instagram explores the delicate emotional choreography involved in hiding parts of oneself from the people we love most. The generational gap between Mensch and their grandfather becomes a kind of emotional geography the show navigates with care. How much truth can be shared? What remains unsaid to preserve love? The performance never pushes these questions too aggressively. Instead, Mensch allows them to hover in the background like the changing scenery outside a car window, always present, occasionally breathtaking, sometimes difficult to look at directly. By the time the journey reaches the Scottish Highlands, the audience has travelled a considerable emotional distance as well. The show’s unexpected and joyous conclusion does not resolve every tension, nor does it attempt to offer easy answers. Instead, it leaves us with the lingering sense that connection between generations is always a negotiation: imperfect, loving, and deeply human. In an era when social media promises constant connection, My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me on Instagram  gently reminds us that the people closest to us may still be the ones who know the least. It is a funny, tender, and unexpectedly haunting piece of storytelling. It is proof that sometimes the most compelling theatre begins with a simple question: what happens when we finally tell the story we’ve been quietly avoiding? Review by Kate Gaul

Unmothered Goodwood Theatre   In the intimate setting of Goodwood Theatre and Studios, unmothered arrives at Adelaide Fringe as a quietly resonant piece of feminist musical theatre - one that favours tenderness and memory over spectacle. Created by new South Australian indie company Dead Darling Theatre, the work unfolds as a lyrical song cycle tracing three generations of women: grandmother, mother, and daughter. It follows the daughter’s life from childhood into adulthood.  It is a combination of spoken scenes, music and recollection, allowing the past to seep gently into the present. The premise is deceptively simple: a daughter attempts to understand the emotional distance between the women who came before her. unmothered explores far more than family biography. It probes inherited silence - how trauma, regret and love are passed between generations, often without language to name them. The show asks a quietly radical question: what does it mean to break cycles of harm when the very people who raised you were themselves shaped by the same patterns? The production leans into a deliberately understated aesthetic. The stage design is gentle and domestic: a couch, scattered lamps, and a sense of a living room that exists somewhere between memory and imagination. Lamps glow like fragments of recollection, illuminating moments that surface and dissolve again. Around this modest centre the action circles, as if the characters are continually revisiting the same emotional ground from different angles. The production sits very well on the Goodwood Theatre stage. Behind the performers sits a four-piece band - visible throughout the performance -creating a soundscape that floats between folk and indie tones. Composer and writer Amelia Rooney performs on lap-steel guitar and vocals, joined by Jordan Holmes on acoustic guitar, Jack Wake-Dyster on piano and Steph Teh on cello. Their presence is more than accompaniment; the musicians are embedded in the storytelling, the score rising and receding like waves of memory. Music often carries what the characters themselves cannot articulate, with songs sliding seamlessly into dialogue and back again. Rooney’s score is particularly effective in these transitions. The songs emerge organically from the narrative, sometimes like an internal monologue, sometimes like a chorus echoing the past. The effect is dreamlike: conversations overlap, memories bleed into one another, and time collapses so that childhood, adolescence and adulthood share the same stage. Critics have described the work as an “unforgettable modern musical,” and the phrase captures something of its hybrid form - part play, part recital, part collective remembering. The performances anchor this fluid structure with clarity and emotional depth. Jordan Bender, as  Daughter, moves deftly across different stages of life without obvious markers, allowing posture, tone and text to signal age. Katrina Ryan’s Mother shifts from weary pragmatism to aching vulnerability, capturing a woman who longs to nurture but fears repeating the wounds she inherited. But it is Lisa Lanzi as Grandmother who leaves the deepest imprint. Lanzi carries the character with a composed physical presence - upright, guarded, occasionally brittle. She embodies a generation shaped by restraint, a woman who often cannot find the words that later generations desperately need. Her performance is compelling precisely because of this tension: we sense the love beneath the silence, even when it arrives too late to be spoken aloud. This layered portrayal is central to the show’s emotional impact. Rather than vilifying any one generation, unmothered reveals how each woman is both victim and inheritor of the past. In moments where the three appear together on stage - sometimes literally speaking over one another - the production captures the strange simultaneity of family memory: the way multiple histories occupy the same space. What ultimately distinguishes unmothered  is its restraint. In a festival often defined by high-energy spectacle, Dead Darling Theatre offers something quieter and more reflective. The result is an intimate, thoughtful hour of theatre that lingers after the final chord fades. By bridging generational female perspectives with honesty and care, unmothered reminds us that the past is never entirely past - it sings through us, whether we recognise the melody or not. Review by Kate Gaul