The Unburdening - Erskineville Town Hall  It is disarming to watch a playwright sit at a keyboard and cheerfully lead an audience in a round of applause before handing his play over to two actors and...

Frumpus — Landed I really wanted to like this. Frumpus is a long-running Sydney experimental performance collective, known for irreverent, absurdist, physically theatrical work, now returning after a ...

Cold War 2.0 (Dopplegangster)"Then something comes along that jams the filing cabinet." As much as I want to avoid putting this into words, Doppelgangster’s Cold War 2.0 was one of those undeniable Fr...

Dancing with the Roots“Their youth is not a limitation; it is the work’s great strength.” Stepping off the train at Fairfield, the city traveller enters another world. One of Sydney’s most culturally ...

When Prophecy Fails  ★★★ A beautifully composed production I admired considerably more than I loved.  The story itself is stranger than fiction. In 1954, Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin claimed to be...

Taverna Miresia – Mario, Bella, Anastasia★★★★★ Verdict: Sublime! I don’t want Banushi to explain the dream. I want to surrender to it.I first came across Mario Banushi’s work from Greece and, two year...

The Shocking Truth About Flat Earth ★★★☆☆There is a very good musical somewhere inside The Shocking Truth About Flat Earth. It just isn't quite this one yet. At 60 minutes, the show feels less like a ...

If I Can’t Dance I’m Not Coming ★★½ There is sincerity here, and a lovely sense of people coming together to dance. But sincerity isn't the same as choreographic rigour. The title is intriguing. If I ...

Anatomy of Survival ★★★★ A coffee order, 22 versions of the truth and a bear: Anatomy of Survival is anything but ordinary.A woman orders a coffee. The barista gets it wrong. She loses it. From this s...

EXIT ★★★★★ No deeper meaning required. Just four brilliant bodies, ingenious apparatus and the sheer joy of seeing what humans can create.Four great-looking guys, winning smiles and beautifully compos...

Handle with Care★★½☆☆A beautifully engineered box that ultimately asks the audience to do rather more work than it gives them reason to want to. The idea is considerably more interesting than the even...

Laughing Out Lonely ★★★★ Haunting, unsettling and utterly compelling, with a voice you simply cannot fault.This is not opera as we know it and that is precisely the point. Laughing Out Lonely is produ...

Hang Time★★★★½ Nothing is ambiguous about the politics, but everything about the staging makes us look twice.Zora Howard’s Hang Time is a disarming one-act play that’s premise initially feels almost c...

Baby of Colour ★★★½ An IUD, immigration, Donald Trump and a cat walk into a stand-up show and sit becomes a funny, surreal and unexpectedly moving meditation on whether we should bring a child into th...

Not for glory ★★★★ The artists trust their extraordinary skills enough to dismantle them and the result is alive, gutsy, sensual and a bloody good time.There is something wonderfully unpretentious abo...

Good Enough?★★★★★ Three artists. Their bodies. Their histories. The courage to say: this is what I know. This is who I am.Good Enough? is an intensely moving and emotional journey, and one of my Top T...

The Jolly Fisherman ★★★★★“A beautifully crafted story of friendship, belonging and the fault lines that open up when the world around us starts to change.” I admire The Jolly Fisherman enormously. Joh...

Border Bodies ★★★★★“A breathtaking collision of bodies, identities and movement, Border Bodies asks what happens when difference doesn't divide us, but gives us the strength to move together.” There i...

Dribble ★★★★★We think we're coming for football. Instead, DRIBBLE asks what it takes to survive — wherever you come from, whatever life throws at you, and whatever choices you make along the way.  Wha...

Salty Brine: How Strange It Is (The Neutral Milk Hotel Show) ★★★★★Complete genius. Salty Brine makes the impossible combination of Anne Frank, Neutral Milk Hotel and first love feel not only possible,...

MAYFLIES ★★★★★ A gorgeous coming-of-age story that makes the journey, the warehouse and the audience’s individual perspective part of the theatre: flawed, ambitious and utterly Fringe.There are some s...

★★★★★ A stunning, deeply theatrical triumph where the human body becomes the story.I usually steer away from theatre about sport. Sport already has most of theatre’s essential ingredients: heroes, vil...

Bigfoot Ripped My Dog in Half I Saw It ★★★★★ A riot of theatrical invention with a surprisingly dark political heart. I am a bona fide Xhloe and Natasha fan, so I arrived at Bigfoot Ripped My Dog in H...

Roleplay A polished, provocative production that knows its territory but ultimately doesn't take us anywhere particularly new. Hannah Reilly is an engaging performer. There is real confidence and thea...

Dracula: Lucy’s Dream★★★★ This is what puppetry can do that naturalistic theatre cannot: make psychological violence physically visible.It is hard to believe that only five performers are responsible ...

ToastSummerhall  ★★★★ With a captivating performer, edgy writing, a fresh concept and an impressive economy of means, Toast turns very little into powerful theatre and lands a significant gut punch. T...

BadgersTraverse 2★★★ An eerie new work that asks a very contemporary question: who owns a story once it has been told?There is something deliciously unsettling about Badgers, Malaika Kegode’s new work...

Endgame ★★★★ The radical pleasure of simply hearing Beckett’s extraordinary text.There is something unexpectedly thrilling about simply hearing Endgame.In Flabbergast Theatre’s production of Samuel Be...

The Galloping Cure★★★★ A powerful musical fable about addiction that asks an intriguing question: when does music theatre become opera?The opioid crisis is a devastatingly rich subject for opera. Addi...

FOR DOLORES★★★★★ Two young women bound by more than circumstance. Outstanding performances, gorgeous specificity and a friendship from which it is impossible to look away.Eva O’Connor’s For Dolores (T...

BOG WITCH★★★★★ “Funny, tender and gloriously bonkers Bryony Kimmings makes the personal political and the bog theatrical.”Bryony Kimmings is a masterful theatre-maker. A consummate performer, storytel...

FERAL ★★★★Personal stories, comic genius and one very fabulous frock - Jess Fuchs is an absolute joy.FERAL is performed by Jess Fuchs. Jess Fuchs is funny. Properly funny. The kind of funny that comes...

Evita Too★★★★★ Who gets remembered? Who gets erased? Evita Too turns the machinery of patriarchy into one very funny, very filthy, very smart musical.EVITA.You know her.The white dress.The balcony.The...

Flesh★★★★★“A masterclass in what can be delivered in 60 minutes: fearless, exquisite and gloriously strange.”Flesh (at Zoo Southside) creates an epic world in just 60 minutes with elegance, extraordin...

Benelong in LondonWharf 1Bennelong in London (by Jane Harrison, directed by Ian Michael, Sydney Theatre Company) frames history through an intriguing theatrical device. A young First Nations actor pre...

Casey and DianaLoading Dock History has a way of feeling distant until theatre reminds us that it was lived by ordinary people. Nick Green's Casey and Diana takes us to October 1991, inside Toronto's ...

Healing ScarsCarriageworks - Moogahlin Performing ArtsThere is something quietly ceremonial about entering Healing Scars. The audience is gathered in a semi-circle around an ochre-covered performance ...

The Day of the Triffidshe New TheatreThere is something wonderfully apt about bringing The Day of the Triffids to the stage in 2026. John Wyndham's 1951 novel has lost none of its potency. Its vision ...

Thirty SixThe Loading Dock, QTOPIA How long do we expect to live? It is a question most of us have the luxury of postponing. In Thirty-Six, Bayley Turner reminds us that for many transgender people, m...

Toy SymphonyPavilion Performing Arts Centre, Sutherland What a fitting way to launch an in-house production program than with one of the Shire's own. Directed by playwright Michael Gow, Toy Symphony r...

The Worst of Us.perhaps, theatre. The Substation, QTOPIA SydneyWhat is the worst thing you've ever done?A child says something he cannot unsay. A mother clings to a truth that may not be true. A man ...

Phoebs, You're a LesbianThe Loading Dock"Phoebs, you’re a Lesbian" arrives at Qtopia's Pride Fest fresh from a well-received Adelaide Fringe season. Written and performed by Phoebe Rodger, a recent gr...

Criptonite: Intergalactic ReduxRed Rattler TheatreThere is a moment, somewhere between the silver-jump suited stagehands gliding across the stage and a pole artist suspended mid-air under a crescent m...

SONDEROld Fitz Theatre |Berlage & CoLet's start where we have to: the set. Slowly moving shards of mirror hang and descend around a lone figure on a reflective circular black floor, catching light, mu...

"Would you risk breaking bail for a packet of Mi Goreng?" The answer, it turns out, is yes. Obviously yes. And the fact that you understand exactly why, without hesitation, without judgement, tells yo...

Romeo & JulieKXTGary Owen’s Romeo & Julie arrives at KXT on Broadway with all the qualities that have made Owen one of the great contemporary playwrights. His writing is always underpinned by deep com...

Murder Horse – The Musical Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre Something is waiting in the wings at BMEC. It has four legs, a body count, and no intention of losing.Sweeney Todd meets Succession. That's the pitch. The Succession reference holds up beautifully: a dying patriarch plays his children off against each other in a battle for inheritance, and the plot structure has that same delicious, dynastic rot. Sweeney Todd, though? Less convincing. Murder Horse is murderous in name and gleefull

An IlliadWharf 1At Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 1, David Wenham takes on An Iliad - Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s one-actor adaptation of The Iliad, directed by Damien Ryan.The work itself has a ...