Famous Last Words. Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility. 18 Sep 2026
Henrik Ibsen was a 19th Century theatre rebel who introduced realism into European theatre and mightily shattered norms and expectations in a fashion thoroughly pissing off the establishment.
Social, relationship moral and political norms where challenged.
Enemy of The People is remarkably relevant to 21st Century era of truth bending, self interest wealth building, populism threatening the environment, community safety, among many things. In Adelaide right now, it’s hugely relevant as people wonder is it safe to swim in the sea.
Director/Playwright James Watson has taken the central plot structure of the play, working to bend it into something where the audience has an involvement. A town has an expensive Spa operating. An economic boon. But local Doctor Thomas Stockman’s (James Starbuck) been doing qualitative testing and discovered not all looks very healthy.
To expose it or not?
When your sister Martha (Kate Owen) is Mayor and politically invested in it, with property developer Alice Aslaksen (Bonet Fimeri) hovering nervously about looking for an in angle favouring her?
What ensues is a battle royal between family members, media friends. Moral certainty is pressured by amoral financial interest and shifting priorities as Thomas produces a damaging report, engages Journalist Hannah Hovstad (Virginia Blackwell) to get it to the public.
It’s a snappy, fast moving, vicious little production. Watson stages it in the round, with cast taking seats at stage corners when not on, ensuring the drama really flares both on entrance and exit.
At times, it seems the level each scene plays at is static. That improves later in the work.
Yet each character’s psychological journey towards amoral compliance, self interest alongside impending martyrdom for Thomas, is deftly and despairingly developed. Most sad of all, is Thomas’ wife Kate (Emelia Williams.) Most shocking, Kate’s brother Morten Keel (Eliza Barnes.)
Steven Durey’s Lighting is raw and powerful, utilising light banks at all corners of the stage. Even house lights have their dramatic place.
Audience involvement in this space and as it’s done is somewhat problematic. The democracy in action, community hall intent is clear. In a small audience space, it doesn’t have the impact it could have, needing some more consideration of how it’s built into its ultimate purpose, crucifying Thomas personally and professionally as an enemy of the people.
Nonetheless, Enemy of The People does its job of successfully engaging and stimulating thinking about how the modern world is functioning for the worst, one in which the community is not really invited to offer solutions.
David O’Brien
Where: Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility
When: 17 - 26 September
Bookings: events.humanitix.com
Adelaide Repertory Theatre. 10 Sep 2026
Director Peter Goers’ production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys pays homage to Simon’s genius capacity for finely developed character relationships and deft hand with comic dialogue.
Director Goers has gone not for replicating an era but rediscovering a depth in humour and founding the entire production on that premises, timing as it demands.
So, no way is this work a museum piece. It is delivered by its leads Rob Cusenza as Willie Clark and Robin ‘Smacka’ Schmelzkopf as Al Lewis with great freshness, with a nod to the vaudeville and early TV variety show era these characters originate.
These old, famous reprobates lost to time, relevance and total obscurity—not to mention a volatile break in their 43-year career—are offered a miraculous comeback opportunity.
Will they take it?
That’s the core to this deeply engrossing two act journey of ancient friends become rivals sorting things out. Willie’s bitterness is pit against Al’s betrayal. Al’s distaste for Willie’s bossiness and intense focus on professionalism discourages further engagement.
Cusenza’s Willie is a lost, pyjama clad clown living near skin of his teeth and memories, desperate for each week’s edition of showbiz bible, Variety.
Director Peter Goers’ set perfectly gives us a threadbare two room suite Willie lives in.
Upstage back wall features a stunning projection, a performer view perspective on a lush vaudeville theatre, seats filled with an audience. Willie’s everlasting dream.
Aged, but vital in motion and wit, Willie is an eternal fighter.
Al is a total contrast. Fine hat, suit and cane. Very slow in motion. He wears age with the barest acceptance, and comic dignity.
This magnificent mix of physical comedy, exquisite timing and respect for the era of the dialogue evinces a captivating performance in which a battle of wills plays out with plenty of twists and turns. Cusenza and Schmelzkopf are renowned Adelaide comic actors. This work fits them like a glove. Their comic business is perfection. They revel in it. Their characterisations solid and deeply true. They own hearts with ease.
Supporting cast are first class. Tom Tassone as Willie’s nephew/agent evinces a weary but strong warmth in his battles managing his Uncle’s life. Lauren Thiel, performing as the classic sexy nurse in the Doctors sketch nails the era expectation of that comic type perfectly. Penni Hamilton Smith as Registered Nurse plays a warm comic line to the character. Stage Manager Johnathon Holds, playing the patient in the sketch, is funny just sitting there.
David O’Brien
When 10 to 19 Sep
Where/ The Arts Theatre
Bookings: artstheatresa.com
Come Back Festival Week 3. Deus Ex Femina // Dead Darling Theatre. 28 Aug 2026
All The Things I Couldn’t Say is an extraordinary mediation on the disconnect in human communication in the age of social media and reality TV.
Writer/Director Katherine Sortini offers a nonlinear series of scenes in one social media platform or another in which human beings misread each other. Avoid each other. Avoid themselves. Mangle big issues. Yet say things they would never normally ever feel free to say.
Performers Rob Wells, Juanita Navas-Nguyen, and Monica Patteson are human faces behind awkward questions. Fierce arguments and enigmatic on-screen text conversations revealing more than we realise about a new behavioural style/grammar of human interaction this century has subtly moulded us to.
Why do you back trace words you type? Why do you rely on acceptable communication tropes? Are you hiding something? Are you lying?
Watching this in action is unsettling. What we think is private, is in fact a universal behaviour.
Then there’s Rob Wells’ superbly placed awkward YouTube character, on ukulele letting the world in his on off pursuit of a paramour amidst a dark moment as a family rides home from church, as well as salacious conversation as two friends embark on viewing Love Island.
The impersonal becomes antiseptically personal. Those loose words, disembodied, hold half their power without a human face.
When there is a face, those couldn’t be said, yet said words, unleash a surprising power to enforce an awkward, unwarranted, unexpected conformity.
All The Things I Couldn’t Say is a work dealing directly with the 21st Century via its own tools; mobile phones, apps and algorithms brought to life on stage. Brilliantly, shockingly, yet engagingly so.
All Grown Up (but not really) well and truly exceeded all expectations.
Never has an audience had so much fun exploring whimsical joys of primary school life as lived in reminiscence by Billie-Rose Russell with lots fab help from Josh Rocca with a focus on the early 2000s.
Is the time period an impediment? Hell no! Sheer auto suggestion instantly brings to mind your own eras primary school days, easily blended into Billie-Rose’s own delightfully drop dead hilarious, big kid, larger than life shenanigans.
Dead Darling Theatre’s production under the eye of Hannah Smith is a brightly coloured, wild, fast paced cabaret style jaunt played in Billie-Rose’s childhood bedroom.
Sure, she’s 24. But not tonight thanks.
It’s this slither of divide between primary school kid and and adult the whole work swings on.
Essentially, it’s Billie-Rose the kidult encouraging the audience to be kidults in a pop culture sweet mix of memory, games, and toys of the era.
Not to mention socialisation side of things.
It’s in tales of Billie-Rose’s own weird and wonky primary school experiences sussing the ‘people thing’ we get a glimpse of the confusion we’ve forgotten in our times. Over being a bit odd or out there. Disasters (that were not, but seemed like it.)
Obsessions over the big must have thing of the day.
It’s quite the achievement, this psychologically savvy work. Taking an audience to places they remember in a passing manner needing a jolt to access something a little deeper. Done in such a delightfully, warm hearted, ferociously joyous way.
David O’Brien
When: 27 to 30 Aug
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: Closed
ll The Things I Couldn’t Say // Deus Ex Femina
Come Back Festival Week 3. All Grown Up (but not really) // Dead Darling Theatre. 28 Aug 2026
All The Things I Couldn’t Say is an extraordinary mediation on the disconnect in human communication in the age of social media and reality TV.
Writer/Director Katherine Sortini offers a nonlinear series of scenes in one social media platform or another in which human beings misread each other. Avoid each other. Avoid themselves. Mangle big issues. Yet say things they would never normally ever feel free to say.
Performers Rob Wells, Juanita Navas-Nguyen, and Monica Patteson are human faces behind awkward questions. Fierce arguments and enigmatic on-screen text conversations revealing more than we realise about a new behavioural style/grammar of human interaction this century has subtly moulded us to.
Why do you back trace words you type? Why do you rely on acceptable communication tropes? Are you hiding something? Are you lying?
Watching this in action is unsettling. What we think is private, is in fact a universal behaviour.
Then there’s Rob Wells’ superbly placed awkward YouTube character, on ukulele letting the world in his on off pursuit of a paramour amidst a dark moment as a family rides home from church, as well as salacious conversation as two friends embark on viewing Love Island.
The impersonal becomes antiseptically personal. Those loose words, disembodied, hold half their power without a human face.
When there is a face, those couldn’t be said, yet said words, unleash a surprising power to enforce an awkward, unwarranted, unexpected conformity.
All The Things I Couldn’t Say is a work dealing directly with the 21st Century via its own tools; mobile phones, apps and algorithms brought to life on stage. Brilliantly, shockingly, yet engagingly so.
All Grown Up (but not really) well and truly exceeded all expectations.
Never has an audience had so much fun exploring whimsical joys of primary school life as lived in reminiscence by Billie-Rose Russell with lots fab help from Josh Rocca with a focus on the early 2000s.
Is the time period an impediment? Hell no! Sheer auto suggestion instantly brings to mind your own eras primary school days, easily blended into Billie-Rose’s own delightfully drop dead hilarious, big kid, larger than life shenanigans.
Dead Darling Theatre’s production under the eye of Hannah Smith is a brightly coloured, wild, fast paced cabaret style jaunt played in Billie-Rose’s childhood bedroom.
Sure, she’s 24. But not tonight thanks.
It’s this slither of divide between primary school kid and and adult the whole work swings on.
Essentially, it’s Billie-Rose the kidult encouraging the audience to be kidults in a pop culture sweet mix of memory, games, and toys of the era.
Not to mention socialisation side of things.
It’s in tales of Billie-Rose’s own weird and wonky primary school experiences sussing the ‘people thing’ we get a glimpse of the confusion we’ve forgotten in our times. Over being a bit odd or out there. Disasters (that were not, but seemed like it.)
Obsessions over the big must have thing of the day.
It’s quite the achievement, this psychologically savvy work. Taking an audience to places they remember in a passing manner needing a jolt to access something a little deeper. Done in such a delightfully, warm hearted, ferociously joyous way.
David O’Brien
When: 27 to 30 Aug
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: Closed
State Theatre Company South Australia. Dunstan Playhouse. 25 Aug 2026
Melbourne-based playwright Ash Flanders cofounded Sisters Grimm theatre company in 2006. They “created a unique style of queer experimental theatre” with productions at Malthouse, Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company and Belvoir. Flanders’ career continued as a solo writer/performer, filmmaker, and now in television - check out Dog Park on the ABC. His “black comedy,” Commentary, is one of two works birthed in-residence with the Athenaeum Group.
Commentary is the ninety-minute unravelling of character Nick Atkinson. Nick is an arts lecturer and student teacher at Flinders (lots of local name calling in gratitude for State producing the world premiere, I posit). He made a film twenty years ago, it was forgotten, and the Adelaide Film Festival is resurrecting it. The film was brilliant in Berlin, but toxic in Australia. Why? A whole bunch of characters in Nick’s life each contribute a colourful strand of light—their version of why—that passes through the prism of the play and converges into the glaring white light of, well, what probably happened. And that white light shines on Nick’s head like the glare of a single bulb in the torturer’s chamber.
Flanders has axe to grind about how artists are received in today’s plethora of media. And that of course is commentary. A bot named tasteray.com wrote a whole essay on modern commentary in which it said “even casual viewers now expect more than just a plot summary - they want context, critique and cultural resonance” in a world where a blogger can break you. And here I am, quoting a robot. Some would say it’s the democratisation of opinion. Flanders’ Nick says leave the film making to the filmmaker and just watch the film.
You don’t need to get involved with all this debate about opinion-making to enjoy the play. Under Petra Kalive’s staccato direction with the design team comprising Matilda Woodroofe (Lighting Design), Nic Mollison (Composer), Dan Thorpe (Sound and Video Designer) and Matt Byrne (Video Content), this is a splendid specimen of how modern theatre techniques are creating a wonderfully complex multimedia experience. But let’s start with terrific acting. Kate Cheel is priceless as an Aussie made-good in LA. Her TV prima donna in the makeup room is prime time watching. Gyton Grantley’s Nick was equally appealing, loveable and flawed. Grantley invited us to see his Nick lying to himself and everybody else yet make us feel sorry for him being lied to. Anna Steen and Shardae Santos, like Cheel have multiple roles in which they excel.
The creative team suavely utilise on-stage video techniques that Adelaide audiences first saw in Sydney Theatre’s production of The Picture of Dorian Gray in the 2022 festival.
You see, Nick has a nemesis. He made his film 20 years ago with Hamish who was a drug addict and acknowledged creative genius and who disappeared after the film was made. Nick is the steady hand, the director, the guy who actually got the film made. Hamish is the bad guy, right? Why is everyone bringing him up? We will see. We’ll see what this white light over Nick’s head reveals. Nick is a victim of his own bad karma.
There was one sentence near the very end of the play, spoken under Nick’s breath while in a drunken stupor, that can easily go unnoticed. Suddenly, everything becomes very clear indeed.
I’m never the first one to rise to my feet, but I was amazed that this brilliant world premiere didn’t get a standing ovation on opened night. Playwright Ash Flanders says in his program notes, “Audiences can be vicious.”
Double bravo!
PS if you want to read the whole bot essay here it is: tasteray.com
David Grybowski
When: 21 Aug to 5 Sep
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
Come Back Festival Week 2. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. Danielle Lim and Sam Lau // Zero Theatre Collective. 21 Aug 2026
Two brilliant comedies. Totally different themes and takes.
Bang On The Nerve was written by famed, infamous, however you see her Australian columnist, TV host and author Van Badham. Badham worked with performers Danielle Lim and Sam Lau to adapt it from its original UK setting to Adelaide, Australia.
It’s an extraordinarily sharp, incisive and wickedly biting, revealing comedy of Asian Australian social mores surrounding being Asian, living in a white world, and navigating relationships.
Elle (Danielle Lim) and Louis (Sam Lau) are forever friends living between two worlds, their Asian culture bestowed by birth and the Australian one they grew up in.
They’re a support network.
Elle arrives at Sam’s mightily pissed off after a day of teaching shit little kids, one who threw a jar of jam at her that missed, smashed, and sprayed her with jam.
Sam? He responds with a funny off-the-cuff song on his guitar. His life is shit too. He cosplays at a restaurant and his girlfriend has dumped him. The stuff everywhere all over Sam’s one bedroom place says single Asian male sads.
Herein lies a brilliantly paced, dark, yet joyously wicked journey into their lives.
Lim and Lau work this production with exceptional comic and dramatic timing. The chemistry is dynamite, interlaced with comic sad boy guitar songs.
Elle and Sam are at odds with so many things in their long friendship, their good, not so good, not happening relationships with white partners.
They draw us into a world of Asian cultural insecurities and Australian cultural expectations like it was something we all do. That’s the magic of their perfectly executed devil may care approach. You don’t, wonderfully, differentiate. You actually get it!
They fight over it all and each other. It’s hysterically funny yet simultaneously eye opening. You start to properly see what the dualities in their lives are and can cost, or rightly, enhance. No ending spoilers! It’s worth it.
Have Sex With Me, Please should be a long touring comedy classic.
Eddie Morrison has the best reputation for sharp, inspiring, couth/uncouth aware comedy writing in Adelaide. This production is a reprise of the ’24 Fringe Season at Prompt Creative.
It’s a snappy, very intelligent two-part structured work if you’re paying attention.
Wham! We’re whipped into a loud and fabulous intro to sex and the rules of cool sexy behaviour, all that delivered with microphone loud voices and mega video back drop projections. Man, it’s so Sexpo full on!
That gently segues into a quieter section of the work, as Eddie and Nate get into the serious business of revealing how to get sex. Well. There’s a sex computer involved and sex science that apparently, Nate has studied!
So ensues an enthused and proud of Nate Eddie, giving expression to Nate’s sex expert Doctors advice (based on his YouTube research Eddie isn’t aware of.)
Herein lies the absolute comic and thematic genius of this work. Try following the absurd advice of YouTube idiots, utilising mannequins as side props to be sexy!
Eddie certainly does! It’s surprising he’s alive, let alone human after the attempt! Plus, you must be at least 31!
The raucous, outrageous extremes this work goes to are entirely logical after the event. It was so funny for one person the night before this writer attended, they laughed so hard they had an asthma attack.
There’s a nice moral at the end!
David O’Brien
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
When: 13 to 30 Aug
Bookings: goodwoodtheatreandstudios.com.au