Spunk Daddy review | Darby James | Melbourne Fringe Festival | The Butterfly Club

During the end of Melbourne's lockdown, we were all pretty much scrambling to escape being trapped inside four walls. We'd do anything to be outdoors and seeing friends. Not Darby James though. He decided to spend more time with himself and donate his sperm. His cabaret show Spunk Daddy follows this journey that leaves James interrogating his choice for donating as well as the moral and ethical reasons in doing so, and bringing life into this planet.



James has written quite an engrossing story that make you laugh, makes you think and makes you feel. His rhythmic storytelling is the perfect palette cleanser from other solo shows that are delivered as a standard monologue directly addressed to the audience. Not only does this make Spunk Daddy stand out above the rest but it showcases James' skill as a performer and his imaginative and emotional style of expression. Vulnerable.

Spunk Daddy is coming up with the goods on sperm donation (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

Fringe Festivals are all about being slightly off-centre and unusual, so Melbourne Fringe Festival could not be a more apt breeding ground for a cabaret about sperm donation. Written and performed by Darby James, Spunk Daddy traces his journey through sperm donation and while the content of the show might have plenty of laughs, the inspiration for the work came from a place of sincere thought on the implications of such an act.

"I started the donation process back in August 2021 part-way through lockdown after clicking on a Facebook ad from an IVF clinic," James tells me. "It’s something I had contemplated but never thought too seriously about until then. The process was surprising, amusing and awkward so naturally it was the perfect fodder for a cabaret. It inevitably reignited some of the existential terror that passes in and out of my consciousness on a regular basis, which is probably common for a lot of our generation."

The Kick Inside - Melboourne Fringe Festival review

Kerensa Diball is 38 and has no children. She's in a long-term relationship and is able to have children but she's chosen not to have any. They're simply not what she wants from life. As part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, The Kick Inside has Diball unpacking her reasons behind this and looking at the responses she's received from those around her and the judgements from society.

Deciding whether you have children or not, is a difficult choice to make. There are many issues to take into account and there are pros and cons with both outcomes. Unfortunately, we are not informed about the factors leading to this in satisfying detail. With the show running at just under 40 minutes of an advertised 50, you're left wondering why Diball has raced through so much surface level material and not taken the time to share these more intimate musings regarding her decision-making process and whether there were any moments when she has regretted this. There are a lot of thoughts being expressed but none of them appear to be fully fleshed out.

At one point, Diball mentions her apprehension in telling her mother and grandmother that she won't be providing the family with a next generation but sadly does not return to this. Recorded phone messages from herself and her mother play as interludes between scenes but they are absent of dramatic tension or engage us adequately. Exploring the pressures and anxieties of this situation would make for some interesting stories and conversation while keeping at the heart of the subject matter.

Baby Cake - Next Wave Festival review

There aren’t many women in the world who can say they’ve never thought – or been asked - about having children. Regardless of the answer, it is a question that ultimately needs to be answered with the ramifications of that choice coming into effect for the rest of their lives. Kerensa Diball and Yuhui Ng-Rodriguez are two friends, one is a mother and one is not, and in Baby Cake, they look at what it means to be a woman and a mother, with a little help along the way.

Ng-Rodriguez has a 2-year-old son, Mori and throughout the show she discusses the changes in her life, particularly in how she balances this with her career as an art maker and the compromises she has had to make to continue working while being a mother. On the other side of the spectrum, Diball has no children, but she did acquire a parasite called blastocystis hominis after eating some raw goat’s cheese in Turkey so she has some idea on what’s it like to be a mother.

Pee Stick review | Melboune Fringe Festival | Courthouse Hotel

It can be a pretty confronting moment when a plastic stick covered in your pee is going to determine the rest of your life. In Pee Stick, we are introduced to 26 year-old Annie who may or may not be pregnant, but we will all know in roughly 50 minutes. In that time, Annie's mind runs rife with thoughts of her own childhood as well as what the future will bring, as she attempts to comprehend the possible changes in her life, all while incorporating some cheesy 80s dance moves and songs, this is 1987 after all.

Written and performed by Carly Milroy, Annie contends with issues a woman in the late 80s would have to face as a (potentially) single mother, from receiving judgements from strangers and gossipy shop assistants to the logistical nightmare of requesting maternity leave from her manager Colleen, where Annie spends her time transferring data from a floppy disk to a CD-ROM - this is the way of the future she excitedly informs us.

We also meet Annie's mother who despite her good intentions, constantly smothers Annie and thinks she knows what's best. Milroy is intelligent enough to not make the show about who the father of her baby is and most importantly, not shaming Annie as to why she was having unprotected sex. We never learn the identity of who the father is or any of the circumstances leading up to the encounter, which allows for the story to solely focus on what Annie wants to do and allows Milroy to really hone in on Annie's state of mind.

Pee Stick - Melbourne Fringe Festival preview

There are moments in our lives where we are thrown a curve ball and all our best-laid plans go out the window. This can take mere seconds or in Annie's case, 50 minutes. Presented as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival, Carly Milroy's Pee Stick is a charming comedy cabaret that follows Annie as she agonisingly awaits the outcome of her pregnancy test.

"Pee Stick is a story about time slowing down while a single woman waits in her bathroom for a pregnancy test result. The show largely takes place in her imagination, where we meet eccentric characters from her world prompting the big questions: what could having a baby mean for Annie's professional, personal and family life?" Milroy (who serves as writer and performer) says. "There's a lot of dumb fun in Pee Stick—awkward high school moments, sea-sick monsters, rhythmic traffic disputes—but ultimately it's a play about the compromises women are asked to make in the pursuit of motherhood."

"The play is set in 1987, which meant I could take the audience back to the beginnings of at-home pregnancy tests when women had to wait up to an hour for a result (conveniently also the running time of the show!). Even though this kind of agonising wait has been compressed down to a few minutes in 2017, the same emotions and reactions are experienced: dread, excitement, grief, love…it's timeless. I wanted to highlight that the assumptions, professional barriers and social stigmas Annie grapples with in 1987 unfortunately still deeply affect women today. Also it means I get to wear a bum bag."

e-baby review

For some people, giving birth and becoming a parent is the most beautiful experience in life. There are unfortunately women who are unable to carry a baby to term and so turn to surrogacy. In Jane Cafarella’s e-baby, inspired by interviews with infertile women and surrogates who share their stories online, we meet an accomplished lawyer who has been trying unsuccessfully for her own child for seven years. She finds a surrogate to carry her baby and we follow the relationship of these two women over the course of the pregnancy.

Both Carolyn Bock (Catherine) and Sarah Ranken (Nellie) do a solid job in portraying the often-tense relationship between these two women. Whilst it initially and naturally took a few scenes for them to appear comfortable with their characters on the preview night of e-baby, their performances feel realistic and honest. Bock finds the right balance in showing a woman who is excited about the prospect of being a mother but also depicting the desperation and shame that she would feel in fear of being seen as less of a woman. She does this both subtly and powerfully through the most miniscule of actions: a fleeting stare, a taut smile and a twitching, fidgety hand. I would have liked to see her more emotive however, in the moments where Catherine appears at her weakest and most frustrated.