Adelaide Festival. The Space. 13 Mar 2026
Whitefella Yella Tree is outstanding theatre and sharply focussed storytelling.
Written by Dylan Van Den Berg and presented by Griffin Theatre Company, this two-hander features Joseph Althouse as ‘Ty’ and Danny Howard as ‘Neddy’. The action follows the unfolding love story between two young Indigenous men navigating life in the early years of white colonisation of Australia.
Van Den Berg’s writing skilfully interweaves two thematic strands: the place of queerness within Indigenous culture, and the destructive impact of European colonisation. While these ideas might seem unrelated, the playwright uses each to illuminate the other with impressive clarity. Their relationship recalls M. C. Escher’s Drawing Hands: each theme gives shape and momentum to the other. Though the narrative is historical, the production frames it with a contemporary sensibility, including costuming that sees Ty and Neddy dressed in board shorts and T-shirts (one imprinted with the “Always was, always will be” slogan) quietly merging past and present.
The central relationship is compellingly drawn through contrast. Ty and Neddy come from different mobs. Ty is calm, sensitive, and a man of ideas; Neddy is restless and driven – he’s a man of impulsive action. Their differences drive the narrative. As the first flushes of Ty and Neddy’s romance gradually emerge, Althouse and Howard reveal themselves to be highly assured performers. Their work is restrained and truthful: nothing is overstated and nothing approaches salaciousness. The intimacy—carefully shaped with the guidance of intimacy coordinator Bayley Turner—is tender rather than provocative. Indeed, the fact that the relationship is between two men quickly becomes incidental, which is precisely the point. As Van Den Berg notes in his program notes, traditional Indigenous perspectives on queerness differ markedly from those imported through European colonisation. One simply exists without stigma; the other imposes it. (And who cares what people like Anthony Mundine think?) This reviewer pondered the similarities of how the writing treats the relationship between Ty and Neddy, compared to how David and Patrick’s love affair in the hugely popular comedic TV series Schitt’s Creek is addressed, where homosexuality is not an issue and almost doesn’t even need to be named.
The play’s emotional trajectory darkens when Neddy’s curiosity and sense of adventure draw him into contact with white colonists, and it changes him forever. Exposure to colonial attitudes, and especially about the immorality of homosexuality, dramatically changes how he views his relationship with Ty, and it almost destroys it. When they are reunited, Ty is supremely suspicious of what has happened to Neddy and he holds even more dearly onto his sense of self and history, as he perceives the looming physical and cultural danger of the whites.
The production’s excellent design elements clearly articulate this tension with precision. The sound design by Steve Toulmin, alongside the stunning lighting by Kelsey Lee and Kaite Sfetykidis, create an environment that is both beautiful and foreboding. The sparse staging evokes the Australian bush, while the lighting captures the shifting interplay of heat, shadow, and sunlight with striking effect.
Dominating the stage is an uprooted lemon tree—the “whitefella yella tree”—suspended above the stage. Citrus trees are not native to Australia, and the image resonates symbolically: the sour fruit and the looming spectre of the tree that could fall at any moment are a metaphor for the destructive forces of colonisation hanging over Ty and Neddy’s world.
This is a powerful production. Its message is unmistakable yet never moralising; its visual and sonic language is evocative; and the performances are authentic. Like the dreamtime, the storytelling passes in the blink of an eye, but its impact is long lasting.
Kym Clayton
When: 12 to 15 Mar
Where: The Space
Bookings: Closed
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Anna Thomas. Holden Street Theatres. 14 Mar 2026
She arrives in a fugue of guilt-laden chaos: out of breath, carrying too many bags.
She is Woman, 2026. Her life is on overload.
Anna Thomas deposits the bags in the four corners of the neatly swept Barbara Hardy Garden stage and, switching into graceful theatrical mode, offers a brief meditation on the physics—and metaphysics—of shadow. It gives pause for reflection.
But not for long. Thomas’s Fringe show roars into recognisable reality as a comparative study of women’s coping mechanisms. She presents four types, each in varying states of coping (or not). Motherhood and school routines are no child’s play. Keeping all the balls in the air against the clock—getting everything right, pleasing everyone—is daunting. To be the “perfect” woman requires an obscenely early start and a lot of self-sacrifice.
It isn’t funny. But Thomas makes it so.
She works the audience with ease and draws out surprising truths. It’s rather fun—until it isn’t. The laughter becomes an interlude as her four sample women push through their demanding days and familiar challenges: delivering baked goods to school, navigating incompetent male colleagues, and absorbing the daily grind of modern expectations.
Thomas, who performs with fine stage discipline and a lovely voice, then appears to commit the ultimate live-performance sin: she picks up a script and refers to it. For a moment, you can almost see stars dropping from the show’s rating. Then the penny drops. Of course she—and we—need points of reference in the race of modern life: cars, clothes, endless washing, shopping, cooking, accommodating the needs of others, work, deadlines…
It’s easy to send it up. It’s hard to live it.
And where, in the harried transience of it all, is the self of Woman?
This is a fast, furious, clever and highly entertaining slice of Fringe. Women: get thee hence, and feel the sweetness of sisterhood.
Samela Harris
When: 14 to 22 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★★
Sandi McMenamin. Holden Street Theatres. 14 Mar 2026
Now we will really be Waiting for Monarto. Sandi Mac’s performance season was far too short—and it served as a teaser for the musical she has been writing (and waiting on) for years: Monarto Pastorale.
Artfully and wittily, she filled the waiting with songs about waiting. Who knew there were so many?
Of course, Sandi is the most in-demand accompanist in town, and she’s a positive Liberace on the keyboard. Her shows are alive, alive-o with deft digits and consummate chords.
And she’s not a bad singer either—though she cheerfully admits she has to sing her own songs because somebody has to. A prolific composer, she also worked, years ago, in creative partnership with the late Andrew Murrell, once one of Adelaide’s great revue talents. Here, Sandi honours him and even harmonises with a recording of Murrell singing a number from Monarto Pastorale. The full work isn’t about the zoo, but about the remarkable history behind its name. It’s quite a story. But, says Sandi, it still awaits approvals. She hopes it will be ready for next Fringe—or perhaps for a standalone launch somewhere. As she puts it in one of her pithy lyrics: it’s like Waiting for Godot, but with more flies.
Meanwhile, in the pleasantly packed Ruby’s Room at Holden Street, she engages warmly with the audience, coaxes a spot of singalong, and unearths some lovely voices in the process. She even costumes up a couple of willing volunteers for a wee skit and generally makes sure everyone has a darned good time.
It is impossible not to adore her.
Samela Harris
When: 28 Feb to 14 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: Closed
★★★
Adelaide Fring. NJNG Productions. Ayers House State Dining Room. 12 Mar 2026
This much touted play by David Visick won the Kenneth Branagh Award for new drama writing at the Windsor Fringe in 2018, It was his first play, and it really is a cracker. While you don’t need to be completely au fait with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you will miss a few of the jokes if you don’t have at least a passing familiarity. If you’re acquainted with Waiting for Godot, Rosencratz and Guildenstern and the various Fool references, then you’re well on the way. And there’s a fart joke (or two) thrown in for good measure.
The two-hander is simply set and rightly so, it’s all about the text. On a sparse stage, American duo Christopher Gibbs and Mark Liebert play Hamlet the Elder (newly deceased) and Yorick, (who passed some 23 years prior) respectively. Hamlet is alarmed at finding himself in what appears to be some sort of limbo; he has not gone through to Heaven or Hell, but is not able to find his way back to the world he knows.
Yorick is a little more sanguine, and tries to explain to Hamlet the situation they find themselves in. It’s all a little difficult for Hamlet to accept, especially as it comes from a fool he has always considered to be his inferior.
It’s a canny plot line, as Visick explores class, the nature and value of democracy and the exercise of power, with the king claiming that he who wears the crown (uneasy as it may be) invariably wins the battle – it’s about the millinery, not the military, you see.
Threads are pulled from across the bard’s canon, coming together in a most colourful yarn. Gibbs and Liebert play off each other well, but the overall vibe is a little flat. There’s not really the punch or timing one would expect from a script that relies so much on wordplay, puns and repartee, and a number of the jokes just didn’t land. While it’s not to be expected that the literary references will all be recognised, it’s unusual for instance, for the central fart joke to be met with the lightest of chuckles.
The State Dining Room has been used for a number of shows this Fringe and having sat through many of them, this writer unreservedly awards the seating as the most uncomfortable to be experienced this year. It’s a good space, but please, change the chairs!
Arna Eyers-White
When: 12 to 14 Mar
Where: Ayers House State Dining Room
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Elevator Repair Service, USA. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 13 Mar 2026
“Treat the novel as a novel and don’t try to make it into a play.”
That, America’s Elevator Repair Service decided while experimenting with ways to stage The Great Gatsby. And therein lies the secret of what we now see as Gatz: not an “adaptation” so much as a staged reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, performed in full.
It is epic: eight hours, six of them solid words. In production for two decades and seen around the world, it arrives at the Adelaide Festival as a feast of pure Americana—an absurdly brave and brilliantly original act of theatre-making laid over Fitzgerald’s unadulterated prose.
It is not just clever. It is brilliant. The eight hours sag only slightly as the end draws nigh and the narrative tightens to its conclusion. Yet even those moments invite us to bask in the eloquence of the writing—especially when the actor lowers the book and the language hangs, unassisted, in the air.
This is leap-to-your-feet ovation material: exactly what festivals are for. An exquisite example of experiential theatre, the expiring hours bonding audience, actors, and narrative in a shared act of endurance and attention. Perhaps the audience tires more than the cast, because the cast does not flag. Book in hand, Scott Shepherd carries it all.
The conceit is a beauty. A drab worker in a dull, anonymous office-land somewhere in New York finds a copy of The Great Gatsby on his messy desk while waiting for his IBM green-screen computer to be fixed—mid-80s, perhaps, when those early desktops were indeed engines of weary frustration. The computer is never repaired. Time, in a sense, stops. The man reads aloud to no one in particular. Gradually his colleagues take notice; the reading becomes another reality; the office workers morph into Fitzgerald’s characters—and the reader morphs too. He becomes Nick Carraway, narrator of the novel, and—crucially—ensuring not a single word is lost, he connects the dialogue with all the interim “he said” and “she gazed” conjunctions. Shepherd becomes the dramatic pivot in a performance of naturalistic impeccability. And how perfect is that name for this role: “Scott” of the author, and “Shepherd” as the one who rounds up and guides the evolving cast of characters.
Fitzgerald wrote his book through the 1920s, drawing loosely on his own life and times. Post–World War I America was the flapper era: the hedonistic jazz age of bootleg liquor and libertines. A Midwestern boy and Princeton graduate, Fitzgerald shifted his social imagination eastward into the orbit of Ivy League privilege and Long Island luxury. These make up the Gatsby crowd, gathered at the lavish parties of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, whose passion is to reignite the flame he once had with the gorgeous Daisy—now married to a former Yale football star. The tale, of course, is doomed. The Great Gatsby is probably among the most universally read of novels, and it remains an irony that Fitzgerald died unaware it was fated for such success.
That success continues through today’s mediums—but never more vividly, perhaps, than in this trip to theatre heaven.
Delivering the pages word-for-word somehow heightens intensity. The affluenza of Gatsby’s world is cleverly offset by the marvellous set of office banality. There is a hint of TV’s The Office, with its battler workplace atmosphere—only here it is a design by Louisa Thompson with entrances and exits to other worlds. It is artfully embellished by actor/soundman Ben Williams, stationed in a cramped office of his own, overlaying the action with birdsong, traffic, party ambience, nocturnal insects, and occasional shattering eruptions of shock. This soundscape is a masterwork in its own right.
The production has clearly been forged through thwarting times and deep thinking, all of which pays off under John Collins’ deft direction. With narrator-led intermissions and a dinner break, its eight hours slither by surprisingly fast—though one must tip one’s cap to Shepherd’s seemingly tireless delivery. He is a sterling endurance player.
The cast is large, but physically and emotionally dominated by Jim Fletcher, who transforms from po-faced office colleague to the tragic anti-hero of the piece: the enigmatic Jay Gatsby. He has magnetic stage presence and, thanks to Colleen Werthmann’s well-considered costumes, cuts an imposing figure in a very handsome wardrobe.
The supporting cast members slip deftly into their dual roles and become wholly plausible as Gatsby’s circle, particularly Susie Sokol, highly simpatico as Jordan Baker. Former Melbourne actress Lucy Taylor dares to give surprising depth to vain Daisy, the object of Gatsby’s obsession. It was wonderful, too, to see our own Terence Crawford among the Elevator Repairers, delivering a moving cameo at the denouement as the patriarch Henry C. Gatz.
Gary Wilmes, Maggie Hoffman, Laurena Allan, Gavin Price, Frank Boyd, Vin Price, Kristen Sieh and Mike Iveson complete the company who brought this remarkable work to life at Adelaide Festival 2026.
Thanks to them all, and to the production staff and crew: it takes a moveable feast of skill and diligence to make art like this. The applause goes on.
We might have lost Writers’ Week but we seem to have gained Reader’s Theatre.
Samela Harris
When: 13 to 15 Mar
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au