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
