Gag Reflex review | La Mama Theatre

After realising that Schoolies in Fiji isn’t exactly free, three high school friends become increasingly desperate to figure out how to fund the trip. Cue a plotline that feels lifted straight from the world of American coming-of-age comedies like Blockers or Booksmart, packed with crass humour, fictionial sexual misadventures and painful learning curves.

Flick’s Gag Reflex adopts that mood wholeheartedly, delivering plenty of outrageous jokes while still allowing growth amongst its protagonists. Beneath the absurdity and sexual comedy is an astute exploration of friendship, insecurity and the confusion of teenage adolescence. It’s also very funny, leaning confidently into awkwardness, vulgarity and chaos without losing sight of the emotional stakes underneath.

Mature Skin review | Northcote Town Hall

Written by Gabrielle Fallen, Mature Skin traces the charged connection between Paul, a successful cis gay fragrance designer in his 40s, and Jasmine, a young trans woman and retail worker who sells his products. A chance encounter in the bathroom of a work event quickly deepens, leading them into a relationship that probes passion, kink, fetishisation, queerness, trans identity, and shifting power dynamics. The play navigates intimacy and attraction, highlighting the vulnerability and complexity of their interactions.



Peter Paltos and Bailey Ackling Beecham bring an affecting chemistry, built on a tension that sits somewhere along seduction and resistance. Their characters circle one another with a mixture of fascination and discomfort, and the actors maintain that equilibrium with poise. The result is a volatile entanglement, where magnetism and hesitation are never quite separate.

Dark Erotica Quartet / Footfalls review | fortyfivedownstairs

Two different plays share the stage in a double bill that explores passion and vulnerability. James Hazelden's Dark Erotica Quartet offers three short, loosely linked vignettes about sex and intimacy, while Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls follows an elderly woman speaking to her unseen mother, a meditation on memory and presence. Both pieces are carefully contained, but each invites the audience into varying kinds of human experience.


Each story in Dark Erotica Quartet stands alone, yet they converse with one another, forming a small universe of desire and openness. Under Blake Barnard’s perceptive direction, Hazelden’s script leans into sensual imagery and frank dialogue that is sexual without being crude. The comedy lands, but never at the expense of the characters, whose sexual natures are treated with authenticity and seriousness. When one reflects on the time a partner’s tears fell on his erect penis, it is delivered not as a joke, but with blunt, candid honesty.

Happily Ever Poofter review

Fairy tales always come with a happy ending for the Princess. But what about our Princes? More specifically, our gay princes? In Happily Ever Poofter, Rich Watkins takes his audiences on a magic carpet ride through the world of a gay Disney Prince looking for love and acceptance while also enjoying some good old-fashioned sexcapades, through songs, of course.

With assistance from his fairy godfather, Prince Henry is whisked away from his kingdom far far away into the real world where he begins his quest to find his own Prince Charming, but until then, he's eager to embrace the smorgasbord that is gay culture and sex. From the get-go, Watkins is at maximum energy levels. He may have created this show four years ago, but the enthusiasm and excitement he brings feels like it's the first time he’s performing it. The story is quite loose but the pantomime-like element of audience involvement and the cheeky humour work in its favour and we can sit back and delight in the ride.

Orlando review

First published in 1928, Virginia Woolf's Orlando spans three centuries and tells the story of a poet who changes sex from male to female. Roughly 95 years to its release, Antipodes Theatre Company present a retelling of Orlando as an electro-folk musical adaptation of Woolf's groundbreaking work.

Written by Rachel Lewindon and Willow Sizer, this reimagining is restrained yet ambitious. There is a focus on access and representation in the cast - both on and off stage - and the performers have combined their own lived experiences into the source material. This has been done with great care and attention to the narrative that feels like it belongs as part of the story and not just wedged in.

Black Widow review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | The Butterfly Club

What do you do when you are a half-woman, half-spider searching for love while fighting your lust for blood? Write a cabaret about it. In Black Widow, Isabel Knight explores the highs and lows of finding a connection with someone as she is forced to live the life of an arachnid. This might not be the best time in Arachne's existence but Knight easily gets the audience tangled up in her seductive web of sex, love and death.

Knight's performance as Arachne - who in Greek mythology is transformed into a spider after insulting the Goddess Athena - is absolutely captivating and fascinating to watch. Her vocal cadence is brilliantly used to build the drama and the intrigue of her life and she remains consistent with her speech patterns. Knight presents a number of well-known songs and reimagines the lyrics to tie in with Arachne's life. She displays a great range in her singing ability, from pop ballads to rock to cabaret classics, with the standouts being James Blunt's "Goodbye my Lover" and Chicago's "When You're Good To Mama."

Last Time review | The Motley Bauhaus

It's late into the night when Jesse arrives at Lucas' home. They have known each other for years, so it's only natural they would meet up when they find themselves in the same city. While there is a tension that needs to be released, it still comes as a surprise to both of them when they realise what the tension between them is. Lily Hensby's Last Time is an intimate and humourous look at two people with a complicated past and a questionable future.

Lotte Beckett and Mark Yeates are thoroughly engaging as long-time friends with part-time benefits. Their rapport and interactions easily establish a history that does not need to be explained. We can understand the friendship between them, as well as the rivalry, jealousy and envy that lingers in the air, with something else that's not quite right simmering below the surface.

Triptych review | Temperance Hall

Anyone who has witnessed a Phillip Adams dance work knows to expect the unexpected. Adams has a knack for creating daring and disruptive pieces that explore themes around sexuality in its rawest form. His newest work Triptych, takes inspiration from Francis Bacon’s 1970 triptych painting, Triptych, in which Bacon used distortion and fragmentation to call attention to his own ideas around love, sex and religion.

In the first of three parts, four dancers (Harrison Hall, Samuel Harnett-Welk, Benjamin Hurley and Oliver Savariego) dressed in simple yet stunning Toni Maticevski designs, spend forty minutes writhing and convulsing on a circular pink carpet to a highly piercing and penetrating score by David Chisholm and Duane Morrison. While one pair appears to have more intimate and vulnerable interactions, the other pair is more aggressive and brutal. The two pairs circle each other, and at times make physical contact with each other, indicating how civility and animal instincts can easily be interchanged, something that Bacon depicted with his art. There are times where you wonder if Adams has choreographed this or if the dancers have completely given themselves over to these urges and being spellbound by the stirring composition. It's a rare experience to watch a performance and feel such intensity permeate throughout the room and be utterly transfixed by what is unfolding.

The MILF and the Mistress review | Midsumma Festival | Theatre Works

Meet Ali Anderson. She is an intelligent, middle-aged woman living the lesbian dream. Or is she? Presented as part of Midsumma Festival, The MILF and the Mistress is a one-woman show examining what happens when happily ever after occurs and why it has to begin in the first place. Why can't the excitement and discovery of life continue? And why must not only middle-aged women, and to be more specific, middle-aged lesbian women, disappear as they become older?

Jane Montgomery Griffiths' script brings an evocative description of Ali's life with humour and sincerity. The audience is given great insight into the mind of this woman and her unique circumstances, but at the same time, Griffiths writes such a relatable story where anyone who has ever felt like life was passing them by or searching for that spark in life, can absolutely connect with and put themselves in Ali's shoes.

BABECITY Hotline review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Trades Hall

If you're looking for a good time, the BABECITY Hotline is the number to call. These bevy of experts are here to make all your (sex) dreams come true. But they have dreams, wants and desires of their own and with the support of each other they might just get them.

Presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, BABECITY Hotline is inspired by lived experiences in sex work within the creative team, so it is disappointing to see how undefined the characters are, and part of this is because the show is trying to cover too much in too short a time. Introducing six characters in a 50-minute show is a difficult task and the result here is that we don't get to know these people. It's also unclear why the writers chose to go down the path they did with a fiery moment that does nothing to progress anyone’s arc or leave any impact.

So Brave review | Melbourne International Comedy Festival | Malthouse Theatre

As Madeleine Stewart says, it's not easy being a one-handed person in a two-handed world. Performed as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, So Brave is a witty look at life through the lens of a disabled woman searching for love. No stone is left unturned as Stewart gets political, philosophical and sexual in a show that has plenty of laughs but is also a critical commentary on our society.

Stewart has a wonderful presence on stage and her storytelling immediately warms the audience. While she begins with one liners and zingers about her disability, including a resemblance she has to a certain American actor, she sets the scene well about being a woman trying to find love (and lust) in a society that is determined to keep reminding her she is different.

Love By The Hour - Midsumma Festival review

In Caleb Darwent's Love By The Hour, Eve announces to her friends that she is a sex worker. She is tired of hiding it and no longer wishes to feel any shame with what she does. As she sees it, it is simply a business transaction. Until one of Eve's friends requests to book her services that leads them both to question their ideas on friendship, sex and closeness, and if it is possible to distinguish between them. 

While the script keeps its attention on Eve and Ashish, Darwent opens the conversation to issues around being trans, racism within the LGBTQ community, loneliness and the struggles that many face with accepting who they are. This makes Eve and Ashish more well- rounded and fleshed out and they become something greater than their current circumstances. This is supported by Kitt Forbes' direction where the characters express themselves through tender body language and gentle touches of physical contact.

Love By The Hour - Midsumma Festival preview

Darwent & Gray are known for creating musical comedies exploring sex, sexuality and gender. Their previous outing, The Rest Is Drag, looked at the labels we place on ourselves and the complexity of building relationships based on those labels. For the 2020 Midsumma Festival, the company is yet again tackling labels and relationships but in a theatrical drama without their trademark music and songs.

Love By The Hour investigates the boundaries of friendship when one discovers his friend is a sex worker and decides to book them for an evening. Writer Caleb Darwent drew from a number of events and moments in their life that subsequently released a Pandora's box of ideas to navigate through. "The central concept sprung from a conversation with a friend of mine who had recently been offered money for sex by a Grindr Daddy. They were contemplating accepting his offer and start to do sex work. My first thought was how awkward and inappropriate it would be if I were to hire them, considering our pre-existing non-sexual friendship. The more I considered this, the more ethically complicated I realised it was," they tell me.

Trapped Inside a Fat Old Lady review | The Butterfly Club

Forming the artistic portion of her PhD, Pauline Sherlock's Trapped Inside a Fat Old Lady is the auto-ethnographic ruminations of a middle-aged woman ranging on topics such as body image, mental health, intimacy and menopause. Through storytelling, stand-up and singing, Sherlock opens up on these and the impact they have had towards her journey of self-acceptance and self-love.

The show plays like a TED talk with Sherlock hooked up to a mic, pacing around the stage with small gesticulations and pausing between sentences as she smiles and looks out to the audience. This cool and calm demeanour puts her in a position of authority, which is particularly fitting as this is the story of her life, so we are swiftly drawn in and eager to hear all that she has to say.

Bitch On Heat review

Bitch on Heat is the story of Pandora, the first woman on Earth. It begins with an over-the-top electrifying opening as a figure fights to be unleashed to the world, paired with booming dramatic music and lightning visual effects. It sets the tone for Leah Shelton’s high camp performance art exploration of women, sexuality and gender through a series of interconnected vignettes that reinforces the creative genius that she possesses.

Shelton appears in a full body rubber sex doll costume that leaves you feeling disquieted at the images it stirs up. While the big open mouth and blonde wig allude to space adventurer Barbarella, your mind can’t stop from visualising the murderous Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. It’s a fitting reminder to the intention of the work in highlighting women's sexuality but also the violence they endure in its various forms. Shelton fleshes out these ideas through gloriously camp humour, including one moment where that of being a good woman is linked to being a good dog with some perfectly timed and highly expressive panting.

Daddy review | Arts House

You are immediately drowned in a haze of pink light as you take a step inside the venue. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust and take in the dreamlike space you have walked into. It is then you spot a figure in skimpy, shiny briefs posed like Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam on a pink cloud of fairy floss and you wonder how you didn't see it earlier. The last in a trilogy of confessional works by dancer/performer Joel Bray, Daddy explores his relationship with his father and subsequently his culture, while also opening up about being a gay man and how he uses sex in an effort to fill an emptiness inside himself.

Bray brings to the surface the relationships, the history and the culture that he has lost due to colonisation. While there’s gravity to what he saying, the fluffy pink set pieces and props (sugar and sweets) are a stark contrast to his words. There’s a link between his childhood and adulthood and culture and identity that is unable to be separated. Not having the opportunity to learn how to speak Wiradjuri as a child from his father, Bray uses an app on an iPhone. This exploration of loss is further highlighted as he struggles to teach himself how to shake-a-leg, a traditional Indigenous dance.

Bella Green Is Charging For It - Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Bella Green began working in the sex industry in 2003, with her first job at a peep show venue. Since then she’s worked in brothels, including a year in BDSM, and as a private sex worker. In Bella Green Is Charging For It, Green recalls her sex work experiences – both hilarious and bizarre – while highlighting the setbacks and frustrations of being in an industry that is not acknowledged as legitimate work and seeks to disempower those in it.

Green ensures that the stories she shares with us involve more than just herself standing behind a microphone and speaking. When she is telling the audience about her Centrelink fraud accusation, she creates a film noir environment with costumes and voice. Another scene plays out between her and a fellow sex worker watching TV and talking about their jobs as clients patiently wait in the next room. Her demonstration of the worst songs to strip to – including “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” – allows the audience a further glimpse into Green’s world. It is as much of a “show and tell” as possible with Bella Green Is Charging For It.

Close Encounters review | Arts Centre Melbourne

It goes without saying that a night out watching the Briefs boys is going to be a hugely entertaining one. Fortunately, this cheeky bunch of jaw dropping talent has finally brought its newest show, Close Encounters, to Melbourne for a limited run at the Arts Centre. This time round, the troupe of sexy and energetic performers, led by their divine captain Shivannah (Fez Fa’anana), have come from the future to assure us that the human race is surviving and everything – and everyone - we are fighting for right now will be worth it.

What follows are a variety of cabaret, burlesque, circus and dance numbers that draw awareness to the importance of using our voices, particularly for those who don’t have the ability to, and for celebrating and loving everyone around us. The acts come thick and fast without the slightest of lulls. Even with a small wardrobe malfunction, Louis Biggs ensures he has firm control over his balls with an impressive juggling striptease act. The paired routine between aerialist Thomas Worrell swinging in a human birdcage and Shivannah is breath-taking in its execution and a powerful moment in expressing the humanity inside each of us.

Love Bird review

It's a parent's worst nightmare. The day their eight-year-old daughter falls in love. To Mr. Ping Pong, her pet cockatiel. Despite its absurd storyline, Georgina Harris' Love Bird is an offbeat approach to exploring sexuality, gender and identity through a highly unconventional relationship that has plenty of laughs with moments that will surprise and strangely delight audiences.

Having not seen its first staging earlier in the year at The Butterfly Club, it feels like time and thought has been put into grounding the work, particularly by Jessica Martin who plays Franny. She delivers a nuanced performance showing Franny as being naive and innocent but with a yearning to comprehend who she is and what her place in society is. As ridiculous as the premise of her being intimate with a cockatiel is, Martin sells the emotional connection she seeks that she can't seem to find from the humans around her.

Hand to God review

In Hand To God, members of a Christian church in a small Texas town are preparing to put on a puppet show, however when a demonic sock puppet possesses a performer's hand, everyone's inner thoughts and intentions are brutally revealed. Billed as an irreverent and filthy comedy that is the love child of The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, Hand To God spends so much of its time trying to shock its audiences that it fails to create characters we care about, or a story that grabs us. 

Director Gary Abrahams has gathered together a formidable cast led by the brilliant Alison Whyte as Margery, who gets herself into all sorts of situations while attempting to prepare for the puppet show. Gyton Grantley, Jake Speer and Morgana O'Reilly remain highly committed to the teenage characters of Jason, Timothy and Jessica but the script can't decide if they are ignorant and self-absorbed teens or intuitive young people. Grant Piro as Pastor Greg is the most defined and consistent character in the show, and subsequently his performance is as close to a realistic performance as we can expect in a story around puppet possession.