Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. 6 Mar 2026
Mary Said What She Said is not easy theatre. It places titanic demands on its solitary performer and tests the patience and stamina of its audience in equal measure. When the curtain falls, this reviewer is left holding two competing impressions: the production is exquisitely crafted—visually and aurally striking, and executed with undeniable theatrical skill—yet it often drifts into territory that feels self-indulgent.
The work unfolds as a 90-minute monologue depicting the final hours of Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth I has already signed her death warrant for conspiring against her, and Mary waits alone in her cell at Fotheringhay Castle on the eve of her execution. No one could possibly truly grasp the emotional magnitude of such a moment, but Mary Said What She Said attempts, with daunting theatrical ambition, to imagine what might have passed through Mary’s mind as the end approached. In doing so, it becomes a reflection on memory, guilt, power and self-justification.
The text is by American novelist Darryl Pinckney, set to a compelling score by the fêted Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, and originally directed by the iconic American director and playwright (especially of experimental theatre) Robert Wilson. Mary appears alone on stage, revisiting the many letters she wrote to friends, supporters and confidants—letters that ultimately formed the evidence used to convict her of plotting against Elizabeth. History has long debated the extent of Mary’s complicity in the conspiracy, but most historians accept that she was at least aware of, and tacitly supported, plans to remove Elizabeth to achieve both her freedom and the English throne.
The role is performed by the French stage and screen actor Isabelle Huppert, who delivers the entire monologue in French—the language of Mary’s court. English surtitles are projected above and to the sides of the vast stage. At times the spoken text is delivered at near breakneck speed, and the surtitles flash by faster than they can be read. The result is annoying: the audience must choose between reading the text and watching Huppert – it is difficult and at times impossible to do both. Yet after a while one surrenders and skims the surtitles as one becomes swept along by the emotional current of Mary’s reflections. In these moments, the character seems almost to be arguing her own innocence, persuading herself that the injustices she endured—particularly the long years of confinement in England—somehow justify the desperate plotting that sealed her fate.
Huppert’s performance is commanding. She presents Mary as both fiercely regal and at times submissive and subordinate. This dichotomy is reflected in her physicality: she moves across the stage like a marionette, her body twisting and contorting as though manipulated by invisible strings. At one moment she is engulfed in green light, silently screaming in fury at her predicament; at another she stands in stark white light that heightens both her royal authority and the possibility—however tenuous—of innocence. The role demands immense stamina, and Huppert never falters. Her voice remains clear, controlled and unwavering throughout. Her movement around the stage is choreographed superbly, and she effortlessly synchronises gesture with changes in lighting and sound. It never feels studied.
Lighting is central to the production, almost assuming the role of a character in its own right. The cavernous stage of the Festival Theatre is naked: there are no stage props; there is only Huppert, and light, forcing the audience to focus entirely on the actor and her words. She is frequently silhouetted against an immense backdrop that fills the entire upstage wall. Subtle and gradual shifts in hue and intensity create an atmosphere of looming dread. At one point she stands behind an invisible scrim that traps a growing cloud of white fog around her. Shards of light pierce the mist, conjuring a supernatural atmosphere. The image is unsettling, not least because it underlines an earlier sonic shock: three sudden, brutal blows representing the strokes required to sever Mary’s head.
Einaudi’s score is as expansive as it is relentless. It drives the drama forward, offering little relief apart from occasional changes of tempo and meter. Melody is sparse, but this austerity seems deliberate and is appropriate; the narrative leaves little room for lyrical distraction.
And yet, despite all its formidable artistry, the production never entirely satisfies, at least for this reviewer. It demands more concentration, more patience, perhaps even more acceptance from its audience than many are prepared to give. At times the experience feels overwhelming, as though the whole thing has been constantly wedged in overdrive.
Still, when the curtain falls at the end, there is no denying that something remarkable has taken place. Whatever its excesses may be, Mary Said What She Said is bold and uncompromising, and Huppert’s performance is a feat of endurance, control and an object lesson in stagecraft. Large sections of the audience rose to their feet in enthusiastic applause acknowledging this is theatre of striking ambition.
Kym Clayton
When: 6 to 8 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Tracy Crisp. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 4 Mar 2026
Tracy Crisp has her fans, with very good reason. Her memoir monologues are hugely successful. Theres’a book of them you can buy. Crisp has carved out a unique niche in story telling employing sophisticated deadpan humour and insight, in which the fantastical and mundane is all rolled up together, resulting in tales transcending as much as they celebrate the ordinary. Audiences love it. The audience is growing.
This work is important given it is her last monologue, but as a pilot episode of a new mystery series. Essentially, Crisp wants to play around with the TV serial genre as if it was a podcast as well as a live reading, as Charles Dickens used to do.
It goes off a treat.
Who Killed Gough Whitlam? is more than a tale of a well named white Bichon Frisé dog, whose whereabouts becomes the subject of conjecture as the title implies. Said dog’s image graces the stage near a large recording device and microphone before the show commences.
Those fans knowledgable of the Stitch and Bitch Club frequenting Crisp’s previous work will immediately recognise names. Unseen characters of a certain age and history embracing the politics and era of the 70s - 80s. These are fierce women. Flawed women. Very funny women. The one most important here is Marianne, who by vote of her friends has entrusted Gough Whitlam to Tracy. She then disappears to Paris.
Gough too, seems to disappear. What happens here? Did Tracy lose her best friend’s dog, or was he kidnapped?
Out of this essential plot construct, Crisp creates a world of inane domesticity, rivalry neediness, worry, and self absorption worthy of any TV soapie.
Crisp tells it with a crafty, gentle story tellers delight. She peppers her tale with places, streets and foibles of Adelaide behaviour that is comically recognisable.
Here is a tale filled with back stories and present moments of stress, as Tracy struggles to have her day, her Birthday, which happens to also be Gough Whitlam’s birthday – nobody seems to remember it’s Tracy’s! Yet where is Gough? The finding of Gough and the significance of a birthday are meaty soap opera material.
Crisp, as story-teller and writer, has this extraordinary knack of melding history, cliché and ordinary life into something magical. Something that opens an awareness of life we often miss because we don’t stop to think about it, or chance a slower look at life too see it another way.
Tracy Crisp is a gold star experience. Do not miss her work.
David O’Brien
When: 21 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Lark, Gluttony. 4 Mar 2026
Luke Belle is Adore Händel—self-proclaimed “everyone’s favourite pansexual, time-travelling songbird” and an “incorrigible 18th-century raconteur”—and from the moment they sweep on stage, brocade shimmering, baubles glistening, and wit sharpened, you know you are in the hands of a master entertainer.
This is high-octane, high-gloss, high-intelligence camp. The stories tumble out one after the other: wickedly observant, faintly cautionary, and razor-sharp, about the eternal truths on the absurdities of love. The humour never stoops, and in an era where gratuitously bad language and gutter humour often substitute for substance, Belle proves you can be hysterically funny without resorting to bargain basement boorishness and vulgarity. The laughs come from witty patter, timing, stagecraft and insight.
The central lesson is disarmingly sincere: know your worth and only ever settle for the fabulous. And fabulous is precisely what Belle delivers. Their magnificent costume looks borrowed from the court of Louis XIV, while their porcelain-doll makeup heightens every raised eyebrow and knowing aside. Clothes maketh the man, and they make Adore Händel. Belle inhabits the character!
For fifty minutes they command the space, strutting and preening with effortless authority. Audience participation—normally a cue for strategic seat-shuffling and ducking of heads—becomes a highlight. Belle coaxes volunteers into their orbit, rapidly dissolving their anxiety and transforming them into co-conspirators. Indeed, one ‘volunteer’ was so enthusiastic it prompted Belle to utter “It’s not about you!”. One onstage “demonstration” in particular had the audience in helpless fits of laughter.
The time-traveller conceit is a playful device that stitches together tales from various centuries. Whether strictly necessary or not, it provides a whimsical frame, but the show’s real engine is Belle themself.
Above all, there is Belle’s voice, and what a voice it is. They move with ease from baritone warmth to tenor brilliance, singing with centred tone that pleasingly remains in tune. The repertoire is as eclectic as it is clever: diva pop, jazz, musical theatre, even opera. They reshape each number—bending rhythm, stretching metre, altering timbre—often giving familiar hits an operatic flourish that reveals both their substantial vocal technique and wicked sense of musical humour. You have not truly heard I Will Always Love You, I Want It That Way, Willkommen, or Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) until you have experienced Belle giving them the Adore Händel bravura treatment!
At times the musical accompaniment is a string quartet, delivered with contemporary edge and high-quality sound engineering. And there’s also technical polish: cues land with precision as Belle’s every gesture syncs flawlessly with the music. It is slick but never feels studied.
This is such a fun show: clever, sophisticated, risqué (without being crude), musical, funny, and bursting with originality.
Kym Clayton
When: 3 to 8 Mar
Where: The Lark, Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. re:group performance collective. Space Theatre 4 Mar 2026
An 11-year-old girl for whom Werner Herzog is a pinup. It’s an amazing stretch, even when the girl is a passionate amateur documentary maker with high-tech equipment supplied as a guilt gift by her father.
Played by Yuna Ahn, Bub is the daughter of a ceramic artist and a nerdy microbiologist whose marriage, we discover as the play progresses, is fraught by the cruelty of mental illness: mother Penny’s bipolar disorder.
The difficult issue of control and lack of it in childhood is upended nicely by Bub having total control of the production itself. She is provided with two adult actors to embody whatever she wishes, these actors being made very vulnerable by being unrehearsed and changed on every performance.
Opening night in Adelaide featured Hew Parham and James Smith whose bravery in undertaking an unrehearsed commission was matched by their skill at improv and sight reading. Bravo both.
Ahn has been playing the role of Bub for a while which made her clipped delivery surprising in opening scenes. However, as the action developed, this tweenager in overalls gave a performance of profound commitment and it was all very moving.
Since she is but a child, the work safety rules about children working in theatre are iterated and demonstrated and the show has a 6-minute rest break for the young actress through which a delighted audience is treated to sweet biscuits.
There is some very interesting business in the production, various devices to elicit the plot and engage the audience. The actors are on and off camera, sometimes out of sync on the screen. There is a delicious streak of fun and games on the subject of Werner Herzog. There also on opening night were lots of students who got right into it and improv was all over the place. Of course, they may have been primed. Then again, there were roars of hilarity at the description of Herzog’s famous Fitzcarraldo movie, hinting that few could have seen it.
Bub, throughout, is trying to develop her documentary about her mother’s art exhibition and to pin down her elusive mother for an interview. She writes to Herzog about her trials and receives a reply.
The two actors respectfully take direction from Bub and read lines from screens and ipads and paper scripts as they go. Bub’s camera can travel on a dolly track which dominates centre stage and is to feature in a momentary theatrical thrill.
Time hangs heavy in several scenes, perchance reminding us that nothing is easy. Inflating a huge mattress, for instance, is not lively but, in the end of the day it is highly memorable and it makes its point. Similarly, Bub’s directions to cut and repeat scenes are both annoying and effective. Perhaps one could call it “visual didacticism”.
It is a very interesting theatre concept and a very important subject for, indeed, the commonality of mental illness is a vastly underrated phenomenon and a troubling puzzle for children.
The production comes from the re:group performance collective out of NSW, written by Mark Rogers and directed by Solomon Thomas. A series of other well-known Adelaide actors is lined up to step into the unrehearsed roles of Bub’s parents. Good luck to all.
Samela Harris
When: 4 to 8 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. By Morgan Rose. Holden Street Theatres The Arch. 3 Mar 2026
As the promo states, “Welcome to the digital rodeo- where desire’s a glitch, purity’s a currency, and everyone’s one bad DM away from an existential crisis.” American born Melbourne playwright, Morgan Rose gifts us a text at once surreal, sexy‑sad, cyber‑savvy and darkly humorous that throws five lost souls into the hellish world of online connection. It’s entirely reflective of a generation who grew up promised the world by the internet only to discover it comes with a heavy cost, lends itself to dopamine addiction and is often a massive let down.
Rose’s writing is darkly funny, observant, and unexpectedly drops emotional gut punches into the mix. The graduating actors of Flinders University Drama Centre, South Australia's well revived actor‑training institution under the deft hand of Renato Mussolino, bring Rose’s caustic commentary to vivid, anxiety‑inducing life. If the standard of performance here is any indication, Australia should brace for an influx of talented young performers.
Ostensibly a recently canned sitcom, Virgins and Cowboys which premiered in 2015 at Melbourne’s Theater Works, rapidly descends into a cocktail of present, past online and material realities and constructs. Sam, a twenty-three-year-old dude stuck in a dead‑end job, meets two women online, both virgins. He embarks on a bizarre self‑assigned mission to “be the one who will be remembered.” Rose uses this uncomfortably hilarious setup to interrogate a demographic spat out the other end of the information age, people in a futile, relentless, painfully human pursuit of happiness. The fact that a ten-year-old play remains so relevant is testimony to the work.
Director Anthony Nicola wrangles chaos into a dynamic, engaging exploration of such empty pursuit. Employing six looming screens, pumping music, and a simple set Nicola layers meaning upon meaning, tension upon tension. Virgins & Cowboys is a poignant, frightening mosaic of digital voyeurism, share‑house vibe, and the surreal limbo between online seduction and actual human interaction.
Tom Spiby’s sound design is magnificently edgy and evocative, sometimes disturbing, always precisely pitched. Monica Patteson’s lighting moves deftly between the looseness of a share house living room to the virtual chat rooms lit like liminal dreamscapes, and an eerie half‑world where digital longing meets real‑world loneliness.
But a show like this is about ensemble, and this ensemble works well.
Emma Gregory’s, Sam, a young man so committed to his misguided crusade to “deflower a virgin” that he teeters disturbingly close to incel territory, is worryingly accurate. I sincerely hope Gregory has never encountered such a man outside the rehearsal room.
Jaxon O’Neill’s, Dale, the pragmatist of the house, is a beautifully constructed performance. His arc rising above Sam only to fall prey to his own romantic entanglement is handled with deep attention to character and dry, affable wit.
Star Thomas, as Steph, is a force. Physical, precise, and playing her scenes with a power that suggests her character could delete a man from her phone and her life without second thought.
Tom Horridge gives Keiran the kind of goofy warmth that evokes Joey from Friends, but with added existential fitness‑bro energy. He’s ridiculous and endearing in equal measure.
And then there’s Anna Symonds as Lane. In full disclosure, as a teacher I observed Symond’s development as an actor over time. Symonds’ work is measured, layered, unpredictable and she easily snaps from comedic lightness to raw emotional truth in an instant. As Lane, a febrile nineteen‑year‑old virgin navigating a world she’s utterly unprepared for, Symonds gives a performance that is as funny as it is desperately sad.
Nicola’s directorial notes remind us that Rose’s text rejects the idea that desire can be neatly packaged, or that gender exists as a stable binary with predictable behaviour. The production embodies an unapologetic, current, dangerous “screw you” to the patriarchy wrapped in neon, humor, and heartbreak.
Adelaide Fringe seasons are often dominated by solo or two‑hander pieces, often brilliant, but there is something refreshing about watching an ensemble tackle the zeitgeist with such boldness, humour, and theatrical grit.
It’s a short season.
So, Go. See it.
John Doherty
When: 3 to 8 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au