The Lark review | Arts Centre Melbourne

In The Lark, Noni Hazlehurst embodies Rose Grey, a woman saying goodbye to the pub that has been the backbone of her life for over fifty years. It’s not just a workplace but a living archive of family, patrons, and fleeting moments that have formed her story. As Rose prepares to close the doors for the last time, memories flood back - bittersweet, funny, and tender.


Hazlehurst is captivating on stage. Few performers can command your attention with sheer presence alone, yet it never feels like it's Hazlehurst we’re watching: it’s Rose. The gruffness, the hardness, the no-nonsense attitude shaped by decades behind a rowdy bar are compelling to watch. Beneath that tough exterior, flashes of vulnerability slip through as Rose lets her guard down. She strikes a delicate balance between these two states, her performance layered and deeply human. Even the way she carries her body shows the toll and texture of the years spent in the pub, and the way she looks out to the audience as she recounts her stories is steeped in memory.

Laugh Lines and Life Lessons with A Handful of Bugs' Jester's Privilege (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

Handful of Bugs – Alex Donnelly and Lachie Gough – return to Melbourne Fringe with Jester’s Privilege, a dark comedy focusing on the divide between the public and private self through the eyes of a jester in a Queen’s medieval court. If there’s one thing this company is known for, it’s the collaborative and playful spirit with which they create and perform. So it’s no surprise that when we spoke to them, they responded to questions as a single voice. 

When I first heard they were making a work on someone approaching the sunset of their career, I worried they might be hinting at their own. Thankfully, the duo quickly put that worry to rest. "Even though we formed as a theatre company in 2023, everyone in the Bugs’ team has worked in the performing arts for many, many years," they tell me. "The show is somewhat inspired in particular by Lachie’s experience as someone who started comedy at 13, and discovered success during his teenage years. Now, he’s not at the end of his career, but the fear that he peaked too soon, or that his glory days have come and gone, has been an ongoing feeling since becoming an adult who is attempting to turn this craft into their full-time gig."

Step Inside the Kingdom of Mushrooms: An Immersive Sensory Adventure (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

A Kingdom of Mushrooms, Five Senses, Infinite Wonder and You. That's the name of the show, and in this immersive participatory experience at Melbourne Fringe Festival, audiences are invited to journey through five distinct installations, each transforming a single sense into a mushroom-fuelled world of discovery.

Jasmin Lefers, one third of Off The Spectrum, felt compelled to translate this small, seemingly simple organism into something so immersive after an introduction to a Dutch pioneer in the world of food and design. "It all started with late-night/early-morning educational sessions over Zoom," she explains. "Aaron, one of the trio involved in putting this together, introduced me to one of the pioneers in food design Marije Vogelzang. From there I put myself through a few courses such as Food & Design Dive. Being in the Netherlands the class times were anything from midnight to 4am. It was bloody incredible. Eye-opening, mind-blowing, and tiring."

Turning Retail Routine into Musical Comedy with Checked Out: The Musical | Melbourne Fringe Festival

Fresh from a musical about group assignments, Josh Connell and Steph Lee are turning their attention to the soul-sucking grind of retail work for this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. Checked Out: The Musical draws on their own experiences in the service industry to explore the challenges, annoyances, and unexpected absurdities of customer-facing jobs, all set to an engaging, lively soundtrack, while also providing a cracking critique of the wider systems that define modern work culture.

"It has definitely been super fun to turn retail experience into this heightened version of reality," Lee tells me. "But also the work has an element of saying ‘stuff you’ to these corporations that you work for. It feels freeing to release pent-up frustrations through humour and song."

a2 Company on going from Fringe Outsiders to Festival Firestarters (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

Not many Melburnians would have known a2 Company this time last year, but after taking home the Best in Theatre award at the 2024 Melbourne Fringe Festival for Running into the Sun, they’ve become a theatre company on everyone’s lips. Excitement is building as they prepare to return to the festival with their sophomore production, Motion Sickness.

It was an incredible season for the company, capped off by their win for Best Emerging Company. Toby Leman (composer and performer) and Ben Ashby (writer and performer) describe the experience as something like a fevered dream. "It still feels like a fairytale. I don't remember all the details from that night because it all happened so fast!" Leman says.