Victory Lap review (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

Victory Lap is a semi-autobiographical one-person show by Mashaka Gunnulson that gently and sensitively explores mental health and suicide with a nostalgic look at friendships gone by, and what saying goodbye feels like.

This is a meditative tale where not much happens on stage but plenty takes place in our minds through Gunnulson's descriptive language and the vivid imagery it conjures. One particular scene where a character is visiting a morgue paints a highly detailed picture of what is being seen, heard and smelt. Their direction of Adam Marks as Billy is minimal yet considered as it allows the performance to be in tune with the tone of the story.

Cull review - Melbourne International Comedy Festival

There's no denying society is ruled by social media, a place where people can share their every thought through video, photos or in 140 characters. From the mundane to the downright ridiculous, everyone is getting in on it, hell, even the Leader of the Free World is using twitter to troll the FBI. Honor Wolff and Patrick Durnan Silva are sick and tired of social media and in Cull, they decide to purge their Facebook friends one by one.

The two methodically work through a long list of annoying social media users in weird and wacky sketches. At the same time however, these sketches manage to humanise the people they are portraying and show the anxieties and longing they have to be connected with other people. This includes the Instagrammer who shares millions of photos of her cat on a daily basis, the Facebook couple posting love-affirming statuses and the zany You Tubers creating videos that are purely attention seeking but who are like, totally doing it for their adoring fans you guys. No one is safe in this cut-throat exploration into the black hole that is social media and its cult members.

CULL - Melbourne International Comedy Festival preview

We've all had that moment going through our Facebook feed and see the 17th meme from someone in two hours, or another baby update or another instance of keyboard activism and wonder why exactly we are friends with these people. Returning to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Honor Wolff and Patrick Durnan Silva's CULL delves into the deep dark recesses of social media as they bring to life all the annoying people we so desperately wish would leave the platform, or at at the very least, unfriend them.

The show is based on a conversation that Silva and Wolff had about the 'personalities' that appear on Facebook and with the constantly changing ways of using and interacting with social media, there have been some changes made to the show since its initial prodcution. "Whenever we see a new social media trend or meme that’s really funny or bizarre, we seek to include it in our show," Wolff tells me.

Saving Spiders - Melbourne Fringe Festival review

In Saving Spiders, presented by Darebin Arts Speakeasy and GRANITE for the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival,  Tina is a young woman who is living her life as if it is one big party. Between her boyfriend Grant and best friend Gracie, their shared existence consists solely of sex, drugs and good times. There is little responsibility in any of their lives, just a lot of fun - until the moment the fun stops, and things can never be the same again.

Saving Spiders relies on its cast to ensure its success, as it is very much a character driven piece. Fortunately, Zoe Boesen, Paul Blenheim, Ryan Jones and Leila Rodgers (who also wrote the show) all embrace their characters wholeheartedly and their resonant interactions with each other feel as If they have known each other for years.