The Crying Room: Exhumed review

A crying room is a small, soundproof room in theatres and churches where a person can visit if they are feeling emotional but want to continue to be part of the experience via one-way glass and live audio feed without disturbing the rest of the audience. In The Crying Room: Exhumed, performer Marcus McKenzie brings this place to the forefront where he tempts us to spend time in our own private chambers, and to call on and welcome the tears. The show is an extension to the 2020 online zoom production of The Crying Room, conceived during lockdown and had McKenzie dealing with the death of his brother.

As we are ushered into the space, our attention falls on McKenzie writhing and contorting himself up a flight of stairs. Along the hall are closed doors leading to rooms that have been renamed the dying room, the wrying room and the purifying room, which has a red light and bubbling sound emanating from inside. Shortly after McKenzie has disappeared from sight, a blindfolded figure with a black robe and holding incense enters from a room and leads us the rest of the way. From here, McKenzie and his team of creatives put on a show with powerful imagery and highly effective design as he examines his own trauma and grief to losing his sibling.

EXHUMED: The ‘Best’ of Bradley Storer review (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

When Bradley Storer suddenly appears in the basement space of The Butterfly Club, it's as if he's always been there. The melancholy and sadness that fills the room from the way he moves his body and looks off into the distance while performing his opening number is palpable. And so it should, as this is Storer performing EXHUMED: The 'best' of Bradley Storer.

Storer has such an unassuming presence that he can simply stand in the middle of the stage and command our attention for the hour. His introductions for each song - and at times, suite of songs - are laced with toned down camp humour but also take us to places of honesty and deep contemplation without feeling like you're at a fork in the road. We are able to sit with and enjoy both of these emotions.

Bunny review (Melbourne International Comedy Fetival)

New Zealand performer Barnie Duncan returns to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with a show that is quite unlike what he has done in the past. His trademark absurdity is still evident in Bunny, but Duncan's dissection of whether dancing at a nightclub at 3am was a way of dealing with his grief or avoiding it after his mother passed away last year, adds a level of intimacy and vulnerability that is often difficult to convey on stage.

While a few jokes don't land that well, or have been tacked on for a cheap laugh (Will Smith's Oscars behaviour is already such a tired punchline), Duncan shows strong control of the audience and meeting the expectations we have upon entering this surreal show about clubbing and death. The unique way in which Duncan sees and understands the world is clearly presented, and with an open heart he shares the complexities of dealing with grief and mourning the death of a loved one, particularly during a pandemic.

The Living Room | Melbourne International Comedy Festival interview

The Accountants of Death will see you now. Back for another Melbourne season after a hugely successful 2019 Melbourne Fringe Festival where they took out the award for Best Comedy, Amrita Dhaliwal and Gemma Soldati's The Living Room is an absurd yet unflinching look at life and death. The two play employees of Death who record the toll of those who have died. One has been diligently doing this for a very long time but must now show the ropes to a new starter, who is on their first day on the job while making sure those deaths get recorded.

It was the performers' individual lived experiences with death and grief that ultimately inspired them to make a work on the sensitive subject on death, often proving quite challenging for them to develop. "I lost my boyfriend in 2012 and Amrita lost her mother in 2017 so these events brought us together to reflect on the experience of loss, the rituals around grief and our questions about death," Soldati tells me. "In the early stages of this, on any given night, either or both of us would cry during the show. The emotions were raw and exposing our grief was intense. When we started, it hadn't even been a year since Amrita's mother had passed and midway through working on the show my father was diagnosed with stage four cancer."