Fu@k! I Killed The Director plunges two actors into total chaos at Melbourne Fringe

What do you do when you kill your director on opening night? If you’re the two actors at the centre of FU@K! I KILLED THE DIRECTOR, apparently, you carry on with the production. Blending clowning, mime, dance and a does of chaos, the new work from Alright? Production Company throws two desperate performers into the aftermath of a very unfortunate accident, as they attempt to keep their adaptation of Romeo & Juliet alive while facing the small matter of their dead director. Created by Nina Hopley, Alana Louise and Jason Schwab and performed by Louise and Schwab, the 50-minute farce promises an anarchic, physical and distinctly unpredictable Fringe experience.

The piece takes a pretty spectacular theatrical disaster and turns it into a celebration of play, silliness and letting go. "Two actors, Cherry and John, are about to debut their rendition of Romeo & Juliet. But moments before the curtain goes up, they accidentally kill their director. Covered in blood and reeling from the shock of the freak death, they then do their best to keep the performance alive in front of the audience. It gets absurd, messy and nonsensical, and there are even some real emotional gut punches," Schwab tells me.

Creepy Boys are promising absolutely nothing with SLUGS at Melbourne Fringe

What happens when you make a show about absolutely nothing? According to Creepy Boys, you make SLUGS, an electro-punk concert, play, clown performance and basement puppet nightmare that promises a technocolour acid trip featuring puppet Joni Mitchell, a two-person horse and, apparently, every body part they have. Created by real-life lovers S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger, SLUGS has spent the past year travelling around the world, earning a nomination for Best Comedy Show at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe along the way.

The tagline is as straightforward as it gets: "It’s about nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. We promise." And they mean it. "It means it’s about nothing! We felt one nothing didn’t drive the point home, but eight…now we’re cooking. We wouldn't read into it beyond that. No need. No pesky themes to go hunting for, just relax. SLUGS is a space where, finally, you can not think about all the SOMETHINGS of the world.  An hour where you get to leave it at the door. What could go wrong?"

When magic turns to horror: Tim Ellis is bringing Darkness Is Coming to Melbourne Fringe

Darkness Is Coming is a magic show with its roots in horror. Drawing on the French Grand Guignol style of graphic, theatrical horror, award-winning magician Tim Ellis explores the mind of a psychopath looking back over his life and questioning his own reality. But there is no dialogue in this show. Instead, projections, music, sound, lighting and magic establish the world of the story, bringing fragments of the character’s imagination to life, with the audience piecing together what is happening from what they see and hear. For its Melbourne Fringe Festival season, the production comes to an intimate 32-seat theatre, where the boundaries between magic, theatre and horror begin to blur.

Elliot Wood is serving up another helping of Mrs Lovett's tasty pies at Melbourne Fringe

After surviving ovens, questionable culinary practices and, somehow, the Stephen Sondheim estate, Mrs Lovett is back. Elliot Wood’s gloriously unhinged Mrs Lovett’s Famous Meat Pies Grand Reopening Extravaganza returns for Melbourne Fringe, bringing its live pie-making antics, relentless wordplay and larger-than-life energy to the stage. With a fresh batch of madness on the menu, Wood is once again stepping into the role of everyone’s favourite ethically dubious pie-maker, ready to serve up another helping of mayhem. We caught up with Wood to talk about reviving Mrs Lovett, what audiences can expect this time around, and why there is no such thing as too much disorder when it comes to baking a pie.

Returning to the role gives Wood the chance to approach the production with more confidence. "I was so thrilled with the reception to the Comedy Festival season of Mrs Lovett, and I am elated to play her again. This is the first solo work I've written and from the outset I felt totally out of my depth; the show was written partly to prove to myself that I'm capable of writing a solo work, and a lot of the early part of the run was like fully dissociated above my body watching myself jump around for an hour," they tell me. "I'm looking forward to a season where it's not the first time ever doing a solo work, with more confidence to ease some of the nerves and ride the wave."

Apricity review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | National Institute of Circus Arts

What I love the most about circus is the surprising ways that it can make you feel. While the logic defying tricks and acrobatics are always the drawcard, I am fascinated to see how the artists go deeper with this and attempt to bring its audience into the show. Circus company Casus manage to do this and so much more with their mesmerising and breathtaking new work Apricity.

The ensemble (Jesse Scott, Lachlan McAulay, Mayu Muto, Amy Stuart, and Harlow Carey) work flawlessly as one with the precise choreography having them coming in and out of the space, directly and indirectly engaging with and assisting one another. Their bodies entwined, they rely on the group to be held up, carried and supported, in both the literal sense and the spiritual.

Insomniac Mixtape review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Trades Hall

There is nothing worse than going to bed at a reasonable time and being awake all night. You've done all the right things to be able to fall asleep but to no avail. Insomnia is here. Telia Nevile knows exactly how that feels and in her cabaret comedy, Insomniac Mixtape, she takes us through her journey of restlessness and watching the clock tick tick tick away towards the morning sun.

She begins with a variety of exercises to get us sleeping, including visualisations and breathing techniques but despite her determination to stay in the present, Nevile's mind begins to race from worry to worry. It is clear from the laughter in the audience that we have all been there before too and perhaps some of us have been triggered by her thoughts and are now worrying about these exact same things.

Alienation review (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

Expectations are high as I walk into the NICA performing space, and see Jake Silvestro and Romain Hassanin sitting in a boat suspended in the air. Created by the two circus artists, Alienation is a physical theatre show that examines what happens when your survival depends on those around you and understanding your environment.

While there's no denying the skill and strength that Silvestro and Hassanin possess, the show left me unexcited and unfeeling. The tricks and acrobatics become repetitive and resemble warm-up activities, things that get the audience anticipating the big stuff. Rollerblades, a hula-hoop and a cyr wheel all make an appearance but they don't eventuate into anything. They disappear as quietly as they appear.

Pulling an all-nighter with Telia Nevile (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

There is a lot that keeps Telia Nevile up at night. So much so that she decided to make a new Melbourne Fringe Festival show about it. In Insomniac Mixtape, Nevile takes a deep dive into the subconscious, where she talks and sings through the real and imagined things that go through her - and your - mind in the middle of the night.

"My brain has a love of chasing its tail, and periodically lighting its hair on fire while it does this," she explains. "Combine that inclination with being a very light sleeper and the result is long periods of staring at the ceiling when I want to be sleeping. The things that wake me up in the middle of the night vary wildly, but are usually driven by anxiety, stress, or an inability to stop turning a problem over. Then again, sometimes it’s the snoring beside me. Occasionally it's a loud car or our downstairs neighbours. It’s a lucky dip of sleepless treats!"

Jake Silvestro on bringing together circus, nature and rollerskates | Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

Put a group of people together in any situation and there are bound to be disagreements and arguments. Put a group of people together in an unfamiliar environment and things will intensify even further. Created and performed by circus artists Jake Silvestro and Romain Hassanin, Alienation is a physical theatre show at Melbourne Fringe Festival that explores our relationships and interactions with each other and nature.

Silvestro and Hassanin have been collaborating on Alienation since 2020 but it wasn't until Silvestro happened to come across a quote by art critic Martin Gayford that he realised what it was they wanted to say. "Romain and I had some ideas about what we wanted to do, but couldn't firmly say how they were connected or socially relevant. I find with projects that build over long time periods, the downtime between rehearsals is an opportunity to keep your eyes open and see what is out in the world that corroborates your practice, and that was definitely the case with "A History of Pictures" by David Hockney and Martin Gayford," Silvestro tells me. "I was reading that book and came across the quote “... alienation, the way in which, especially in Western Culture, people are separated psychologically and economically both from each other and from the natural world”, and it tied together a bunch of elements from this new work in a more succinct way than I could have come up with."

JSMR | Jessica Stanley | Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

There's a new thrill-seeking pass-time that's been happening worldwide over the last few years. Causing tingles to run through the back of someone's head and down their spine, it's a sensation that only be achieved from the intimacy of watching someone whispering into a microphone, or slowly brushing their hair or even crinkling wrapping paper. Yes, we are talking about the the world of autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR. As part of this year's Melbourne Fringe Festival, performer Jessica Stanley is delving into the ASMR world with her show JSMR. 

While this has become a recent obsession for people, with millions watching these videos on YouTube, Stanley's fascination with ASMR began during her schooling days and has continued to grow since then. "I remember, in the later years of primary school, I really enjoying when friends borrowed stationery from me – a rubber or pencil, something like that – and I got nice head tingles while they used it," she recalls. "And it has grown from there, where I now love roleplay ASMR videos, where someone is pretending to give you a haircut or check you in to an appointment. I enjoy the specificity and variation, and that they can allow for quite lengthy videos too. I used to really like falling asleep to videos by an artist called Amalzd; I’m pretty sure I stumbled across her YouTube channel by chance and just really enjoyed her voice, accent and roleplay scenarios. I would also recommend ASMR Bakery for someone who wants to watch a whole variety of objects being tapped or played with."

Little Monster - Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

We all have voices in our heads. The voices that keep us up at night, the ones that make it hard to focus on that report that is due that week or the ones that make us doubt ourselves when we are actually amazing at what we do. Returning to the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Telia Nevile digs into her own voices with her new show, fittingly titled Little Monster.

In her previous shows, Nevile uses nostalgic pieces of media or childhood pop culture such as Disney or John Hughes movies, to create a darker tale around mental health or facing the often harsh realities of life, and this trend continues with Little Monster, where she performs in the rhyming style of Dr Seuss. "I've always loved how musical Dr Seuss' rhyming style is and how much momentum it has. It kind of runs down a path, tripping over its feet like a puppy," Nevile tells me. "After the last two years, I wanted to challenge (and reward) myself with something fun and free-wheeling, and the language that this style encourages is so playful and very open to the ridiculous."

Dog Park - Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

It has been proven that dogs can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, ease loneliness and encourage exercise and playfulness. They truly are a human's best friend. Walk past a dog park and you're bound to see dogs sniffing each other, running for tennis balls and marking their territory while their owners gather around catching up on local news and talking about their fur-baby like parents waiting to pick up their children from school. But what happens when that pocket of sanctuary is threatened by an unspeakable act? Presented by Lab Kelpie, Dog Park is a satirical and biting look at how one dog park community is impacted when a private school boy on exchange from Sri Lanka, is found dead in the leafy suburbs of a Melbourne dog park covered in bites.

In some ways, Dog Park is a work almost 30 years in the making when director Lyall Brooks, who also serves as Artistic Director of the now regional-based not-for-profit theatre company, first met the show's playwright Sally Faraday. "Sally and I used to act in shows and musicals together back in the *cough* late 90s *cough* when she was studying at Monash University and I was basically just hanging around there pretending to be a student because they had an incredible Performing Arts program," he recalls.

The Boy, George review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Errol's

The year is 2028 and it's been six days since the Queen died. King Charles is privately mourning her death, seemingly ignoring the fact that the monarchy's reign is about to be overthrown by the House of Commons. But 14-year-old Prince George has a few tricks up his sleeve to save the monarchy and ensure his rightful place as the future King.

Written and performed by Patrick Livesey, The Boy, George is a queer and satirical look at privilege, power, the struggle to hold on to it and what happens when the tables turn, and it's all fabulously seen through the eyes of the now 14-year-old Prince. The set and costume designs consist of a few select pieces that tell us all that we need to know about George; there is a chaise longue that he reclines on while wearing his pink pyjamas, pink robe and pink slippers. On the table next to him, incense burns with three framed photos of his 'Gods': The Queen, Princess Diana and his mother Kate.

While George adores these women, he has nothing but contempt for the men in his life. He sees them as weak minded and inept, so it's all fallen on his shoulders to save the monarchy. He attempts to record a video urging the citizens of England to retain the status quo, but for a number of reasons he is unable to complete this, partly because his thoughts turns to a fellow classmate at Eton College on whom he has a crush on.

The Boy, George | Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

On 22 July 2013, George Alexander Louis was born. Why is this important? Because George is the third in line of succession to the British throne. Looks like Prince George - as he is otherwise known - has his entire life planned out for him. But by 2028, with the Queen dead and George finally set for the throne, it appears that a revolution will begin which will threaten the rule and existence of the entire Royal Family. In his solo Melbourne Fringe Festival debut, writer and performer Patrick Livesey takes a futuristic look at the life of Prince George and his aspirations to be King in The Boy, George.

"The idea for the show began as a semi-autobiographical piece about graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts and taking on the world, but that became very boring very quickly," Livesey recalls. "One day at work, I was doing the dishes and I began to imagine a slightly older and gay Prince George losing it all, and thought that might be a bit more fun, and also be a nice homage to my mother's intense Princess Diana obsession. I grew up with a Royal-obsessed Mum and bookshelves full of biographies so they were never distant figures, but I would classify myself as more of a curious observer than a fan."