★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Lauren Hance. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 26 Feb 2026
Vera Lauren Hance has an issue. Becoming a Nun. We’re invited to sit in on that conundrum. It involves losing vibrators for faith, amongst many things.
Holy O is an interactive experience. Audiences are made well aware of this, the rules that apply, and the fact their role is as Saints. Sparkly gold pipe cleaners were provided to us pre-show to create our saintly orb, pop it on your head, and you’re good to go.
The stage and seating area are strewn with clothes. An open travel case sits upstage half full. A solo chair occupies centre stage and there’s a small clothes hanger with one or two items on it.
Vera herself is crashed out on the floor in black bra and pants. Her clock alarm goes off. Once she realises what time it is she must decide what to wear? Oh, and wow, there’s this audience watching her with gold halo orbs on their heads. An audience of Saints! Saints she can appeal to! Does she ever.
We, the audience of Saints, chose what Vera wears. Our choices bring forth tales of people in Vera’s life. Clothing items become memories of people from her time as a teacher, midwife, and gynaecological nurse. This is intermingled with her bizarre journey in religious faith, and battles with the Nuns in the order she’s joining, who live near her.
Holy O is one wonderfully quixotic collection of tales, all of them wickedly risqué, but filled with an unmistakeable, vulnerable humanity matching Vera’s own quite challenging, yet endearingly confused personality in search of prayers, for those long-lost people. Plus blessings on the clothes selected to be rejected for their service.
The gift of the show is its dual layers of pop psychology ‘Christianity’ and deeper need to find a lost identity by making peace with all of the darkly comic tragedy littering Vera’s life.
For the Saints, it’s quite a funny, quirky experience. The innate light-hearted, but fiercely focused nature of Hance’s performance makes this sense of unserious playfulness totally plausible and acceptable. Keeping that balance in play ensures the work never goes to the depths of unbearable despair or to an unbelievable level of ridiculous levity.
David O’Brien
When: 19 Feb to 1 Mar
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios, The Studio
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
