Adelaide Festival. Windmill Theatre Company. Adelaide Entertainment Centre. 28 Feb 2026
As the audience files into the arena and climbs into the bleachers, skaters whizz around the track; women in shorts, t-shirts, helmets and knee pads. It’s already exciting, as they form patterns and weave in and around each other. It’s roller derby!
Based on the experiences of Director Clare Watson and penned by Virginia Gay, Mama Does Derby is the story of the very close relationship between single mother, Maxine (Amber McMahon) and teenage daughter Billie (Elvy-Lee Quici). The pair do everything together, whether it be road trips across the country or travelling through Tibet. It’s been a nomadic life, so it’s all a bit of a shock to end up in a small town after inheriting a house.
It’s time to do normal things, like go to school, take driving lessons, get a job in admin. But these two approach normality from way left of centre, and thanks to Gay’s sparkling script, the repartee between the two sets them up to deal with it all as they always have, together. And defending/supporting each other to the hilt. Until… But that’s later.
Driving lessons come via Weird Neil, the neighbour (Antoine Jelk), who has a minor preoccupation with death. And the car is an old hearse. At school, Billie is befriended by Hux (Aud Mason-Hyde) who has some issues of his own but recognises the outsider in Billie. Billie, an artist, is fascinated with Frida Kahlo and soon enough is in trouble at school for filling her books with ‘doodles’, adaptations of Kahlo’s work. Enter the counsellor/therapist (Annabel Matheson) and the darker side of this story begins to emerge.
Billie is afraid; of the dark in her bedroom, of the demon who lives under the bed and of the crushing weight that settles on her chest when she tries to sleep. “Name your demon!” suggests the therapist.
A word on this demon. Black and sparkling, we first see it as a large, clawed hand, sliding out from under the bed. It emerges a little more each night, unless we see it in all its fearsome wonder. And a wonder it is. A lissom, elastic, sinuous creature, a voice scraped from an ancient tomb, a body that winds and twists itself around the room, taunting, horrifying yet chillingly attractive. Benjamin Hancock threatens to steal the show with this character;’ fortunately, Gay pulls it all back when Billie, as her therapist advises, names the creature ‘Nathan’. And blow me down if that’s not the creature’s name. “How did you know?” develops into a relationship, that by the end…
…but that would be telling.
It seems to take quite a while before we get to the roller derby component of the show, but in the meantime, the skaters (who hail from the Adelaide Roller Derby League) have not been idle. The set itself is on wheels; couches, bedrooms and kitchens are rolled in and out by the derby crew, as is the three-piece live band. Dressed in the black and white stripes of umpires, under the direction of Joe Paradise Lui (music director/guitar and vocals) they pump out excerpts of artists of the ilk of Charlie XCX and Bikini Kill, add a bit of narration and even take on the odd role (the afore mentioned Antoine Jelk also plays drums and is the voice of Nathan).
Maxine finally takes to the wheels. After a bit of night skating, she comes across the derby gals. She keeps this from Billie; she just wants a little bit of something for herself. Billie’s night terrors become worse and eventually, after being left at home by herself again, she discovers that ‘Mad Max’ has been keeping secrets from her. Can the relationship survive this?
Amber McMahon is a consummate comic actor. She uses her face, her body and her voice to accentuate lines and scenes, bringing to her character the strength of the independent woman, the pathos of loneliness and the blinding protection of the single mother for her offspring. And all with a comedic and dramatic timing that demonstrates the skilled actor she is.
Elvy-Lee Quici brings confusion and vulnerability to the juggle between her teenager hood and a world-weary knowledge beyond her years, as she discovers why Nathan is in her life, and just what the weight is that lies heavy upon her young body. She is at once childlike and a blossoming young woman, learning to let go.
Virginia Gay and Clare Watson have done a sterling job; the script is funny, sad, insightful, intelligent and incisive. The direction is clear and clever, the set delightful, and the characters are beautifully realised. This production promises much, and with just a touch of biffo, it delivers.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 28 Feb to 8 Mar
Where: Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. The Parks Theatres. 28 Feb 2026\
The Elephant Room is a brand-new Australian play being premièred at the Adelaide Fringe.
According to the printed Fringe Guide, the work is presented by Goldmann Collective, while the website lists Froxfield Theatre. At present, there is limited readily accessible information about the company, cast and creatives beyond the Fringe listing and a handful of social media posts. As with any emerging company, increasing online visibility will only strengthen audience engagement and help interested patrons connect more easily with the artists behind the work.
So, to the show itself.
The performance this reviewer attended had a very modest audience—whether due to venue familiarity, publicity reach, or the crowded Fringe marketplace—yet the two performers committed fully and energetically to the task at hand. That dedication deserves acknowledgement.
The play examines the extended aftermath of a hit-and-run accident from the perspective of the driver, Theo. Seeking both redemption and accountability, he elects to participate in an experimental rehabilitation program built around isolation, sensory deprivation, and sessions with an unseen “facilitator”, Joel. The dramatic tension lies in the evolving exchanges between patient and facilitator, and the shifting psychological terrain between them.
For fifty minutes the actors inhabit a tight circle of icy white light. A white cloth defines the patient’s isolation room furnished by only a bed; chairs sit beyond its border for the facilitator. Visually, the aesthetic is striking and cohesive, and the accompanying soundscape effectively supports the mood and atmosphere.
The production makes confident use of shadow and silence. At times, the stillness feels prolonged, and several moments carry the weight of a possible ending but the narrative continues. With further shaping, these pauses may gain even greater dramatic precision.
Theo is a demanding role, and the actor—who also appears to be the playwright—sustains it with focus and emotional commitment. Joel is given an intriguing edge: at moments his earnestness hints at something more ambiguous, creating a productive tension against the tentative rapport forming between the two men. Greater vocal projection would enhance clarity and ensure the text lands with full impact, particularly in a venue of this size.
The script is ambitious and thematically substantial. With continued development and performance, there is clear potential to refine the structure and more sharply reveal the emotional spine of the work, deepening the audience’s investment in these complex characters. When that connection fully takes hold, the play’s exploration of guilt, responsibility and redemption will resonate even more powerfully—and this emerging company will undoubtedly continue to grow in confidence and voice.
Kym Clayton
When: 27 Feb to 1 Mar
Where: The Parks Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 28 Feb 2026
History of Violence is beautiful theatre about ugly themes. It is an adaptation of an autobiographical story of the same name by Édouard Louis.
History of Violence follows the leadup to, unfolding and aftermath of the rape and attempted murder of Édouard by Reda. The depiction of this is unpleasant but well executed. An innocent tryst between two young gay men on Christmas Eve goes horribly wrong. Issues of poverty and fate, systemic and personal racism, and classism are also addressed, and they provide uncomfortable lenses through which to interrogate the sexual violence that is central to the plot.
The action is not played out chronologically, and we move backwards and forwards in time and through various locations as the rape is examined by Édouard himself, Reda, police, forensic investigators, and Édouard’s family, particularly his sister.
The play is spoken in German, with English surtitles projected on the upstage video screen. With the performance played non-stop and coming in at around two hours without an interval, following the surtitles was a challenge. This reviewer felt they were too comprehensive and too fast at times and took your attention away from the finer nuances of what the cast were doing.
A key idea that is explored in the play is how discussion of an event causes different recollections. It’s almost a sociological analogue of a scientific principle that once a ‘system’ is observed it is altered forever. As Édouard is questioned about the terrible events, the content of his answers and explanations are influenced by what he thinks might be the prejudices of the questioner and how they might be judging Édouard himself. It’s not so much Édouard wanting to hide or admit various things, it’s more that he doesn’t want to facilitate the questioner constructing interpretations about Édouard’s world. For example, the police are astounded that Édouard would even think about having a one-night stand on Christmas Eve. Édouard expresses genuine surprise and responds ‘yes, why not?’. His interrogators fail to recognise Reda’s exact ethnicity and simply dismiss him as another economic refugee ‘from North Africa’. Édouard responds by almost not wanting to press charges because Reda’s circumstances likely forced him to do what he did, and who can say they wouldn’t do the same if they were in similar circumstances.
The rape and violence is initiated by Édouard indirectly accusing Reda of a crime. This very act makes Édouard a more complex character, and, arguably, less likeable in the eyes of the audience. In some ways, Édouard and Reda become ‘equals’ as protagonists, and this is part of the beauty in the writing and the adaptation. In simple terms, there are two sides to the story: who or what one believes depends on one’s observational standpoint.
Édouard Louis’s character is played by Laurenz Laufenberg, and Reda by Renato Schuch. They are compelling. Laufenberg gives Édouard a sense of superiority, which is clearly recognised by his sister Clara, played by Alina Stiegler, and her husband played by Christoph Gawenda. They both convincingly double as other characters and are the source of much needed moments of humour to break the tension. Clara in particular asks laser focussed questions of Édouard , and she frequently turns the direction of the action and Édouard’s countenance in an instant. Again, good writing, and tight direction by Thomas Ostermeier.
The play is simply set on an almost bare stage. There are a few items of furniture that tare moved into place as needed, and there is a functional shower that is used on several occasions. In one memorable and almost confusing flash-back scene at the start of the play, where Christoph Gawenda plays Édouard, Gawenda strips and showers to wash away the stain of the rape.
A key dramatic device is the cast using mobile telephones to video various scenes which are then projected in real time onto a giant screen that comprises the upstage wall of the set. Intimate and other moments are exposed in minute detail, and we as audience almost feel voyeuristic. There is also an on-stage musician, Thomas Witte, who in the time-honoured tradition of silent movie organists provides compelling accompaniment to a number of scenes. His evocative underscore drives a sense of urgency and foreboding.
Yes, beautiful theatre but about ugly themes.
Kym Clayton
When: 27 Feb to 2 Mar
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Heaps Good Productions. Ayers House. 27 Feb 2026
On this evening Adelaide audiences trembled slightly and awaited the deluge. It was the Friday evening we had been promised great rains and there was anticipation. Were we to get a flood of biblical proportion? It seemed appropriate.
We are joined by an old woman, hunched and walking with a cane. Dressed in pre-Victorian period costume, this is Mary Anning the Elder (Michele Kelsey), wise and worn out, our narrator for the evening. She is joined by Mary In The Middle (Mia Ferraretto), who is the young woman who clambers across the cliffs of Lyme Regis uncovering ‘curiosities’, fossil ‘thunderbolts’ and ‘fairy hearts’ to sell to keen tourists. The two are joined by young Mary Anning, a precocious 11 year-old (Adele Binns), who explains she was struck by lightning as a child and it ignited her passion (so to speak). It should be noted this is the accepted story of Mary Anning, it being difficult to flesh out the picture with accuracy, though writer and producer Michael Mills has a near encyclopedic knowledge of the topic.
This then is the story of the English geologist Mary Anning, told in stages, and by means of a musical. Yes, her story is the basis of the 2020 Kate Winslet movie Ammonite. Here there are three Mary Annings on stage, it’s a theatrical device and for the most part it works. The three burst into song, and are in good voice, working well together. Adele is at times a little shrill, but this is a question also of sound balance, which is at time underpowered, yet the piano recordings which accompany seem to chatter the melody. But this is a Fringe show, the costumes seem excellent, the set design simple, and the performances are of high quality.
There are problems. Most are structural rather than in the performance and they are important. How do you tell the relatively obscure story of a woman from over 200 years ago who lead the science of paleontology, so new a field that it had no name? Not through song, evidently, because key concepts remained obscured or were unheralded. The problem here was one of focus: Anning was apparently wedded to her geological hammer and the fact she discovered a trove of dinosaur skeletons (and thus hitherto unknown species) seems to be made a sidenote. The central prop is a beautifully painted representation of the Plesiosaur fossil embedded in its [rock] matrix and yet very little is made of it. Oh, for some focus lighting! Periodically Mary In The Middle picks up a brush and gives it a desultory sweep.
What is needed is less song and more detail, but here’s the rub. The writer knows his history, is entranced by a minor historical figure and determines she should be made famous, but how to set the historical context? To my mind you cannot mention the Reverend William Buckland, the foremost English geologist of his time without making it clear he was the principal ‘Deluge-ist’ of his time, a strong proponent of the Biblical tale involving a flood and an ark. Likewise, you cannot allow Anning to casually mention Baron de Cuvier (the Frenchman was the most eminent anatomist and scientist of his time bar none) without explaining how important a part he plays in this story.
And yet, fifteen minutes after we are told the story of Lightning Mary, we are back at that same point, the song is sung and hammers flourished. I get that it becomes a motif, but at the end of the show we know it’s the end of the show because the song is given a reprise. This interrupts a powerful original narrative since we are invited to overlook the death of Mary Anning as a logical endpoint in the story.
Mary Anning died in 1847 at the age of 47, worn out by a life a near grinding poverty, thus missing Mr Darwin’s famous treatise on Natural Selection by a mere decade. Why do we not know this fact, concentrating instead on holding a hammer aloft? It is an artifice, and twee at that.
This is not a bad show, despite the criticism. Indeed, with some minor tweaks and some more narrative (y’know, the part where the story’s told) it would be a very fine show. Or, as I overheard one person say, “You don’t need a whole song about a dog, do you?”
Alex Wheaton
When: 25 Feb to 21 Mar
Where: Ayers House
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. April Albert. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 27 Feb 2026
The whole David Hasselhoff concert at the Berlin Wall before it fell in 1989 has almost been erased from history. But the footage is there. A bizarre melange of pop culture and politics in which the Hoff offered his most disturbing, cringeworthy performance of a dying career.
April Albert maxes out this near forgotten moment of political cringe in Kapitalism is Your Friend.
Albert plays Franzi, an East Berliner who suffered a fall celebrating the wall’s demise, ending up in a 30 year coma. She wakes to a world in which promises of freedom and capitalism so eagerly sought during the days of the DDR, have arrived. How does she find it?
Franzi’s adoration of David Hasselhoff has reached religious level. There’s a little suitcase shrine to him. There’s also a massive double reflection photo of him adorning the wall of stage left. Franzi is Lycra clad, 80s pop loving and in amazement at the free modern world. She creates an aura of the sickly, icky commercialised 80s the shift in post DDR East Germany adopted world-wide. We recognise it, inwardly laugh, cringe at it, but Albert ensures by her performance of Franzi as innocent, critically unaware in the initial stages of the show so that’s as far as we take it.
The joy of the little “electronics” (mobile phones) that let you connect to everyone anytime is her greatest fascination. It’s the point the work starts to get beyond the idea that the end of history was reached when capitalism defeated the DDR and the wall fell.
This crazy East Berliner lives in two minds about life in the communist DDR and capitalism. Slowly but surely, reconciling the two becomes suddenly a lot harder than expected. Those electronics and being able to twit with “hashtags” suddenly get her thinking a little differently as she recalls how human beings surveilled people in the DDR. The electronics do it too, don’t they? What does being‘content’ mean? It’s freedom, isn’t it? That’s capitalism as friend, Ja?
Kapitalism is Your Friend mixes comedy and disturbing considerations brilliantly. It puts political realties smack bang in the middle of the distracting toys of 21st Century capitalism. Overwhelming aura of nostalgia the work entails is so awkward you’re forced to think again.
David O’Brien
When: 21 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au