Things I Know To Be True review

Living in the suburbs of Adelaide, the Price family appear to be leading a pretty charmed life. Home owners, good careers, marriage and children and going on holidays. But beneath all this deemed success lies frustrations and fears that gradually reach the surface and threaten the foundation of everything this family holds tight in Andrew Bovell's Things I Know To Be True.

Written in 2016, Bovell's script remains a powerful punch to the gut in its exploration of how love can heal and hurt us, and the generational changes of what the Australian dream is. Bovell takes the time to establish the relationships between the parents and their four children, which each child given hefty scenes of confession, either through monologues or conversations with their parents. Kitan Petkovski allows these varying degrees of strained relationships to develop through his astute direction and guiding authentic and sincere performances that tackle some challenging topics.

The Almighty Sometimes review

Mental illness and identity take centre stage in Kendall Feaver's acclaimed The Almighty Sometimes. Anna (Max McKenna) is an 18-year-old with a mental illness who has been medicated for the last seven years. When she rediscovers short stories she wrote as a child, she begins to question how much of her personality and identity has been changed or hindered due to the medications she has been taking.

McKenna delivers an absolutely captivating performance as Anna. On the cusp of adulthood, they show Anna as simultaneously confident yet fearful, certain but confused. Their ability to constantly switch from sweet-natured and kind to rude and spiteful, sometimes within the same scene, is testament to the commitment McKenna has put in developing their character and making sure it is as authentic as possible. Nadine Garner as Anna's mother Renee, is highly compelling as she attempts to be understanding, nurturing and calm with what's happening to Anna while preventing the world that she has so carefully built from falling to pieces. Garner clearly displays the love that Renee has for her daughter and how desperate she is for her to lead a life without pain.

Lie To Me review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

Josh Staley is here to tell us that magic is not real. It's all about illusions, sleight of hand and powers of persuasion. But when you watch his magic show Lie To Me, and witness his acts, you can't help but wonder if he's actually lying to us, and magic is, actually, all around.

The intimate setting of Staley's show means there are no shining lights, dramatic music or pauses to distract us from what's happening. The audience is three deep and very close to the front, and yet, Staley pulls off some utterly baffling acts where it is impossible to see how he accomplished it and how no one in the audience was able to figure it out.

Putting On A Show review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

How do you describe Alex Hines' new show Putting On A Show? It's about the trauma of being locked in a McDonalds freezer as a child, but it's also not. It's about being a millennial with ADHD, but it's also not. It's about the ethical and moral issues about fast fashion and online stores like Shein, but it's also not. It's everything you'd expect from Alex Hines, but guess what... it's also not. Perhaps the best way to describe it, is part stand-up, part sketch, part confessional but fully twisted and totally fucked up. And it's absolutely brilliant.

Hines has always had a magnetic presence, particularly as alter ego Juniper Wilde, but here, she pulls us further into her world. As Juniper she can lean into the bat-shit crazy and looseness and run with it, but in Putting On A Show, Hines is herself, and while she is still outlandish and over-the-top, there is a vulnerability present that's not been seen before. References to her ADHD diagnosis, childhood experiences and her family, while not exactly of a personal nature, strike a chord with the room and strengthens the connection between her and her audience.

Karate Man: A Live-Action Video Game review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

It's 1988 and Karatetown has been overrun by pesky goons. Luckily Karate Man is here to save the day. But can he expel all the goons AND get the girl? Karate Man: A Live Action Video Game comes from the ingenious minds of BEAK (Daniel Scarratt and Bruno Dubosarsky) where the entire story takes place in the style of an 80s arcade game.

The audience gets to dictate the narrative and all of Karate Man's movements, because as the show title subtly alludes to, this is a live-action video game. We are given a demonstration of the controller functions and then it's up to us to lead our hero to victory. Through some creative use of Bluetooth technology, when someone presses 'punch", the word is boomed over a speaker and Karate Man punches. If "left" is pressed, then the word left is announced, and Karate Man moves left. It's a fantastic way to get audience invested and engaged in the story.

She Slayed: A Drag Murder Mystery review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

What happens when four drag divas try to put on a show together? With such big egos and big hair, there can only be one answer: murder. She Slayed: A Drag Murder Mystery is a deliciously camp, uproarious whodunnit of a drag queen who is viciously murdered - but in a fashionable way.

Created by Nicholas Reynolds, She Slayed feels like it's a drag show pretending to be a comedy show instead of a comedy show pretending to be a drag show, and this is partly because of the four cast members and the confidence and experience they have as performers. The script, while allowing for plenty of ad-libbing and improv, is full of great one liners and sassy retorts between the characters. Reynolds has played to the individual strengths of the cast and so the concern here is not about finding the truth of their character but to go out there and have fun, which spills out into the audience.

#SWIFTTOK review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

There's no denying that Taylor Swift is one of the most influential pop stars the world has seen. Her recent concert tour in Melbourne is said to have injected $174 million into the local economy. There are a lot of "Swifties" out there, and one of them is Dean Robinson. Their TikTok is dedicated to all things Swift and they have amassed a following of over 17,000 people, which makes them the right person to put on a show about the Swift Sensation.

In #SWIFTTOK, Robinson “plays” an obsessed 14-year-old fan who knows everything about Swift. They share the conspiracy theories surrounding new album release dates and discuss all the easter eggs that Swift leaves in her songs and lyrics for fans to decipher. Some sound so incredibly far-fetched but these are legitimate claims about Swift and her career.