Intolerant review | Melbourne Fringe | Spielhaus

Intolerant invites its new recruits (the audience) to Anaphylaxis Diner for a tongue-in-cheek orientation session, ensuring they’re fully across the menu and its many substitutions for every dietary allergy and intolerance. After all, before you can serve a meal, you need to make sure your customers leave alive. Guided by our no-nonsense boss and chef, Anna Phylaxis (Uma Dobia), we’re taken through a seven-step induction that’s equal parts funny and unsettlingly real.

Trained as a soprano, Dobia brings her extraordinary voice to a show that cleverly blends cabaret-style wit with sharp insights into living with severe allergies. The fusion of opera and pop is thoroughly entertaining - it’s where she shines brightest with some exceptional original songs, including the perfect ballad "Is It Any Wonder". Her presence is enhanced by a striking blue-and-orange dress with matching make-up and accessories, adding a playful and vibrant visual layer to the performance.

Between musical numbers, she shares stories of everyday encounters that have gone horribly wrong: unknowingly using a soap with almond oil in it that leads to a comedy of errors, and the time a family member ate a handful of nuts and then proceeded to make dinner without washing their hands. They’re told with a wink and a grin, but the consequences are no joke. Each anecdote drives home the constant vigilance required to simply stay safe in a world not built for you.

After an hour of these moments, you start to feel the same exhaustion Dobia describes: the never-ending anxiety, the mental checklist before every meal, the quiet fear of forgetting an EpiPen. It’s deeply human and moving. You can hear the frustration and exasperation in her tone, and that’s where the work finds its emotional weight.

Intolerant follows its orientation premise all the way to the end, working through each of the seven steps. But once we reach the final one, things wrap up a little too suddenly. There’s a sense that we, the audience, should somehow “pass” our training and complete the journey with Dobia, but the show ends just as that idea starts to build. It’s a slightly abrupt finish to an otherwise engaging and personal piece.

Still, Dobia’s mix of humour, vulnerability, and powerhouse vocals makes Intolerant a memorable and insightful experience. It’s part cabaret, part cautionary tale, and all heart.

Read our interview with Uma here. 

SHOW DETAILS

Venue: Spielhaus, Cnr Kulinbulok La & Berrbang La, Melbourne (near Queen Vic Market)
Season: until 12 October | 7.10pm
Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets: $24 Full | $22 Concession | $18 Wednesday Hump Day
Bookings: Melbourne Fringe Festival

Image credit: Mark Gambino