Mass Hysteria review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Trades Hall

Forget Sunday service. Mass Hysteria wants to show you what happens when you replace church pews with a cabaret stage, hymns with saucy songs and religious devotion with drag. This Holy Trinity, consisting of Iva Rosebud, Meg Hickey and Jens Radda, is ready to lead us into salvation and enlightenment through cabaret, burlesque and live performance.

From the moment the audience settles in, it is clear this is not going to be your traditional service. The trio embrace the theatricality of worship, moving between song, dance, burlesque and comedy while playing with the rituals and language associated with the church. There is a knowing irreverence to it all, but the production is not simply about making fun of faith. Instead, it takes these traditions and gives them a very queer, very cabaret interpretation.

The show is divided into several chapters, including Communion, Temptation and Baptism. Each comes with a passage from the Book of Hysterium, offering the audience a subtle tease of what is about to come. That unpredictability is part of the appeal of Mass Hysteria. You never quite know what is coming next.

Harold Holt: The Man, The Myth, The Pool review | James Ward | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Bard's Apothecary

I may be incorrect, but I do believe Australia is the only country in the world to have lost a Prime Minister. On 17 December 1967, Harold Holt went for a swim and never returned. Poof. Gone. Disappeared! In Harold Holt: The Man, The Myth, The Pool, James Ward tells us about this. But to simply tell us about it would be lazy. What Ward does instead is take a deep dive into the cultural and political times surrounding Holt’s drowning, and how Holt’s own choices, actions and lifestyle contributed to the circumstances of his death.

Ward presents as many visual cues as he can through an exceptionally well put-together presentation. Remembering this was a time when capturing live footage of someone wasn’t as easy as having a phone in your hand, Ward has managed to assemble newspaper articles, book extracts, graphs, charts and archival interviews with Holt's wife, all helping to explore the bigger picture of this period in history.

Die Clown Die review | Benny Boot | Melbourne Fringe Festival | The Motley Wherehaus

Die Clown Die promises to take us to nirvana. The problem is that Bootoh (Benny Boot), the clown leading the way, has no idea how to get there. Over 50 minutes, he cycles through meditation, Shakespeare, music, inspirational speeches, rituals and audience interaction, repeatedly dying and starting again in the hope that one of them will finally unlock enlightenment. It is an appealing concept for a clown show, one that sets out to find comedy in the gap between spirituality and human fallibility.

There are some good ideas here, and Boot is an engaging presence, particularly when he interacts with the audience and improvises around their responses. There is a genuine playfulness in the exchanges with the audience, and these moments make the clown feel most alive. But the pursuit of nirvana felt progressively disjointed, with the various attempts of transcendence rarely forming a clear progression. I found myself wanting to know how each new exercise was moving us closer to the promised state of being, but was left wondering where we were actually headed. The show has plenty of material to play with, but it needs a tighter structure to make those disparate pieces feel like part of the same journey.

Hotsy-Totsy is bringing a chaotic children’s party for adults to Melbourne Fringe

After years of entertaining children at birthday parties, Ava O’Brien and Peggie Barnes decided they deserved a different kind of audience. The New Zealand act have swapped balloon animals and face painting for a two-hander packed with clowning, puppetry, magic and whatever else they can throw at the stage. After premiering at the 2026 New Zealand Fringe Festival, Hotsy-Totsy now heads to Melbourne. We caught up with O’Brien and Barnes to talk about escaping the birthday-party circuit, turning their skills into a show for adults and why, sometimes, you just need to book yourself a better gig.

For O’Brien and Barnes, the appeal of creating a children's party for adults lay in the feelings of excitement and wonder of being completely swept up in the experience. "We felt the magic of a captivated audience and figured that adults love entertainment just as much as kids. When Elsa shows up at your 5th birthday and you're high on sugar, you are invincible," they tell me. "We wanted to capture that feeling in our own performances and bring adults into that silly magical world. It's got the thrill, energy and unbridled joy of a children’s party, but filled with much more adult humour. It's us playing ourselves, with our inner children onstage with us, and no one is putting the brakes on!"

Mystery of the Fish review | Frank Benson | Melbourne Fringe Festival | The Motley Wherehaus

Taking a stab on Frank Benson’s show Mystery of the Fish to officially begin our Melbourne Fringe Festival season. The only thing to go by is the brief and cryptic description: “A clown ponders the enigma that is his pet fish. Fish is good. Frank is good. Fish is mysterious. Frank will solve this mystery.” After all, Fringe is about taking risks, as a performer and as audiences.

Benson is a great clown, and he remains committed to the bit throughout. There are a number of fun, silly moments that showcase his willingness to embrace the absurd, even when the material itself doesn’t always land.

There are a few instances where the humour feels underdeveloped, such as when Frank decides to read us some poetry. It’s chucklesome, but not exactly funny. His “fuck” sketch also relies on fairly basic humour that doesn’t leave much room for creativity.