Imagine: you walk into the Motley Bauhaus Theatrette (a place well renowned for its indie theatre) to the tune of the Playschool theme song, as well as other childhood classics like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and The Lion Sleeps Tonight. In front of you sits a cosy children’s set complete with plastic kids teapot and painted field back drops. That’s right, it’s Daddy Daycare time, a place where lost daddies go to get their working with womens check whilst discussing consent, anatomy and having fun all at the same time!
After sitting down, what followed was an hour of the most raucous children’s entertainment I have ever seen! Not only was our host (Steph Crothers) beyond hilarious, energetic and devilishly suggestive, but she also really, ah, took care of us, if you catch my drift.
Now heads up, this is a show that features a lot of audience participation. But if you are happy to moan, yell ‘YES MUMMY’ and sing songs about the more delicate parts of a woman’s physique, then you are in the right place. And as part of the audience, it was hard not to get swept up in the energy of it all. Crothers perfectly breached the line between suggestion and play, bringing forward act after act that had myself and the viewers around me gasping for breath in between laughter. Her skills with clowning and comedic timing left even me (one trained in such skills) a little bit speechless!
The tech of the show also strongly enhanced the whole experience. When things were light and playful, so was the sound. When things got darker, so did the lights. And the prerecorded sounds used in the show perfectly complemented what was happening on stage. It was a master class in not too complex tech and how it can truly bring a show together. Thematically, this show also explores that intersection between child and adult, taking me back to a nostalgic period with an adult twist. And boy, would I visit there again!
In total, this is a show that is great fun, but it has more substance than just this. It does bring up real questions of the consent culture within our society. And it did make me think afterwards, but I also just had a really excellent time with it. And my stomach and mouth hurt from smiling and laughing which is never a bad thing.
But look at that, it’s time on the rocket clock for this review to end! As a general rule, do go see this show, bring your friends (especially those of the sheltered persuasion just to watch their little minds be blown) and get up on stage! This is a show that deserves a whole lot of love.
Ally Morgan is a new kind of supernova performer. In her 2026, Melbourne Comedy Festival show, If You’re Hearing This, she swoops us up and takes us on a whirlwind tour for the ages.
Morgan starts her show with a burst of optimism and the idea that things out there can be really, really good, even when they are clearly not that good at all on home soil. She’s fashion forward in a suit that is halfway between a NASA 1950’s one and something that the babes from Wet Leg might wear, showing her preparedness to get down and rock her world with some serious songwriting and lyrical talent. Morgan’s departure from earth is on a fast paced countdown. She’s on a do it yourself mission to save herself from Armageddon. Planet Earth is in a right pickle so the logical thing to do is eject herself into the atmosphere and take a chance — interplanetary Survivor style.
There, in the outer limits of space Morgan finds she has a lot of time on her hands so what better way to keep her sanity and her cool zeitgeist narrative alive than by doing an up to the minute broadcast over the space airwaves — even if no one’s listening. Her set is simple but effective. She knows how to transform a space. Musical instruments, a keyboard, a DIY screen, a squishy gold helmet and she’s away.
The brilliant songs allow Morgan to address all sorts of crisis points and her talent and skill in nailing where we all are right now lies in leaving no stone unturned. She pans manosphere podcasters, references the lost innocence of the early 2000’s, and employs visual gags from major film makers to billionaire asshats, as well as giving us a running commentary on news and politics. Morgan sings folk tinged songs that Joan Baez would be proud of. Her songs are at once poignant, hilarious, urgent and ironic. Her transitions from mother earth guardian, to digital information purveyor includes themes on life and death; the point of relationships and human connection; the vagaries of big C, Capitalism; tales from her youth and neurodivergent ways of being.
She calls out the force with which man tries to destroy everything good and calls out her own ambivalence when called to action as well. If anything the themes are so wide reaching and profound that maybe a slight edit would serve the overall project? But Morgan sings, moves and delivers ballads as sweet as The Sundays juxtaposed with political fight-the-power style black and white documentary narration that nevertheless ignites us all. She asks us to think deeper about how we got to a time when a girl who just wanted to have fun lost all that in the Black Mirror-esque way we live our lives now.
Morgan shows us that even though innocence has been washed away by a zillion screen time hours and the “encyclopaedia” of ChatGPT use, that in fact, love is still what humans want. It’s a very savvy well written show filled with modern day ennui. But is anybody really listening? Is Morgan just screaming into the void? Will she ever be saved? Her teabags and fuel are running low and she’s scared and utterly alone…well, for a while at least.
Ariana & the Rose arrives at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with The Breakup Variety Hour – a wry cabaret-style journey through the six stages of romantic recovery and she brings with her genuine charm, vocal talent and the kind of infectious energy that makes you root for her from the moment she walks on stage. The Trades Hall, with its intimate rooms and slightly scuffed historic charm, is a fitting venue for a show about the unglamorous business of losing love.
The show’s structure is clever: six stages, neatly framed, moving from the wreckage of a relationship toward something that resembles wisdom. Ariana guides us through each with a mix of comedy banter, personal anecdotes and occasional audience participation, the familiar toolkit of the solo festival show. But it’s in the final stage – a philosophical, even quietly spiritual, reflection on what breakups really reveal about us – that the show finds its most resonant ground. It was a genuinely satisfying way to close, offering unexpected psychological depth after the performance and pizzazz, leaving the audience with something to carry home beyond the glitter.
Where The Breakup struggles is in finding its identity. The original songs, (written by Ariana herself and available to buy on CD), are genuinely good and surprisingly moving but they are almost at odds with the rest of the show. They don’t quite gel with the comedy banter surrounding them and the collision between the two never quite resolves. We found ourselves watching what felt like two shows running in parallel – a moderately entertaining comedy set and a mini pop concert – each quietly undermining the other’s momentum. The songs, which we expected to be more snippy, funny comedic offerings instead spoke of genuine feeling and heartache; the comedy parts were too brief and held the audience at too much of a distance. Holding these two different styles at once is a difficult ask of any audience and on the night we attended, it created a sense of awkwardness that the show never fully settled.
Comedy, as anyone in the industry will tell you, is brutally hard work. The hours behind a single hour of stage time are extraordinary – the writing, the refining, the killing of darlings, the courage required to simply show up and do your thing in front of strangers and hope it lands. The fact that The Breakup has sold out in Ariana’s native New York and toured major international festivals, including our own Melbourne Comedy Festival, speaks to a genuine audience connection that is clearly working somewhere. On the night we attended, the crowd was small and a little cool and she handled it with professionalism and grace, working the room with warmth even when it didn’t quite warm back.
But for those of us who came hungry for laughs, the show could lean further into personal storytelling – the messy, specific, mortifying anecdotes of dating life that make comedy truly land. What we got felt, at times, more like a vehicle for the music than a cabaret style comedy show. The personal glimpses Ariana did share were genuinely engaging, we simply wanted more of them. More of that rawness, more of those stories – the ones that make an audience wince in recognition and laugh in relief and then the balance would tip in a way that could make this genuinely special. It probably didn’t help that in our audience most people were happily coupled, so for a comedy that’s all about break-ups and needs to bounce of the singletons in the room, it wasn’t quite able to find its mark. Nonetheless, the bones of something very funny are here. They just need more flesh on them.
As it stands The Breakup is an enjoyable, well-intentioned romp through familiar romantic territory, performed by someone with good stage presence, a strong voice and a lot to offer. Ariana & the Rose is a performer still shaping her show into its fullest form – and if the philosophical heart of that final act is any indication of where she’s heading, the best may well be yet to come.
The cast for the 2026 Australian tour of the musical comedy Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) was announced today. The five performers who will portray the iconic roles of Elizabeth Bennet, Mr Darcy, Jane Bennet, Charles Bingley, Mr and Mrs Bennet and all other characters, will be Amy Lehpamer, Zoe Ioannou, Kaori Maeda-Judge, Ruby Shannon and Teo Vergara. Amy Lehpamer has led the cast of national tours of & Juliet as Anne Hathaway and The Sound of Music as Maria, as well as lead roles in Dusty, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, The Who’s Tommy, School of Rock, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Once, Rock of Ages, The Rocky Horror Show and Shane Warne the Musical. A NIDA graduate, Zoe Ioannou most recently appeared in the Australian tour of Grease, understudying the roles of Sandy, Frenchy and Jan. Other performance credits include Hairspray, West Side Story, The Wizard of Oz and at the Hayes Theare Co, Dubbo Championship Wrestling, Bridges of Madison County and Big Fish. Kaori Maeda-Judge’s varied career has seen her in productions of David Bowie’s Lazarus, White Pearl for Sydney Theatre Company, The Dismissal for Squabbalogic, The Hello Girls and Meg March in Little Women at the Hayes Theatre Co, and Jack Thorne’s Tony Award winning A Christmas Carol, as well as TV’s Neighbours. A recent graduate of QUT, Ruby Shannon is making her professional debut in Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of). Since graduating, Ruby has collaborated on several independent theatre, film and development projects. Teo Vergara is an actor, singer, dancer and a graduate of the VCA, who made their screen debut in the ABC series Crazy Fun Park and followed this by starring in the queer and gender diverse series Turn Up The Volume for the ABC. Teo was a member of the original Australian cast of Jagged Little Pill, and starred in the original Australian musical Converted! for ATYP.
“It has been a long-held dream to undertake this tour with our take on Austen’s masterpiece,” said writer and original director Isobel McArthur. “This show is a true celebration of love and romance so, now that the match-making is done, I cannot wait to watch Pride & Prejudice* (sort of) and its Australian audiences fall head over heels for each other.”
Co-Director Simon Harvey said, “I am delighted with the stellar cast of Australian talent we have been able to assemble for this production and can’t wait to travel down under to begin rehearsals. I feel sure that the wit, physical comedy and karaoke sound track of Isobel MacArthur’s take on Jane Austen’s timeless classic (sort of), will chime with Aussie audiences.”
Direct from its triumph in the West End where it won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy, Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) is a unique and audacious retelling of Jane Austen’s most iconic love story. Men, money and microphones are fought over in this irreverent but affectionate adaptation where the stakes couldn’t be higher when it comes to romance.
This “smart, laugh out loud funny” (Daily Telegraph) show features a string of pop classics including Young Hearts Run Free, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and You’re So Vain. Coming to Australia for the first time, these five fearless women bring Austen’s world of love, class and chaos to life with heart, humour and unstoppable energy in this modern take on one of the world’s most adapted pieces of literature.
★★★★★ “Faithful to the book, it’s also a raucously irreverent romp” – Daily Mail ★★★★★ “Riotously funny… gloriously entertaining… frankly sensational” – Variety ★★★★★ “Layer and layer of brilliance” – The Scotsman
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE* (*sort of) By Isobel McArthur after Jane Austen Original production directed by Isobel McArthur Co-Director Simon Harvey Produced by Neil Gooding Productions and Woodward Productions by arrangement with David Pugh Limited
SEASON DETAILS
MELBOURNE Venue: Atheneum Theatre Season: 18 June – 12 July Performance Times: Tues-Wed 7pm, Thurs-Sat 7:30pm, Wed & Sat 2pm, Sun 3pm Prices: From $65 (Transaction fees apply) Bookings: ticketmaster.com.au or phone (03) 9650 1500 Groups 8+ visit ticketmaster.com.au Groups 20+ email groups@ticketmaster.com.au
SYDNEY (Presented by Sydney Opera House) Venue: Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House Season: 16 July – 30 August Performance Times: Tues-Sun 7pm, Wed & Sat 2pm, Sun 1 or 2pm (times vary weekly) Prices: From $69 (Transaction fees apply) Bookings: https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/theatre/pride-prejudice-sort-of or (02) 9250 7777 Groups 8 + call (02) 9250 7777
WOLLONGONG (Presented by Merrigong Theatre Company) Venue: IMB Theatre, IPAC Season: 2-13 September Performance Times: Tue 6.30pm, Wed-Thurs 6:30 or 7:30pm, Fri-Sat 7:30pm, Thurs 11am, Sat & Sun 1:30pm (times vary weekly) Prices: From $84 (Transaction fees apply) Bookings: merrigong.com.au or (02) 4224 5999 Groups 8+ call (02) 4224 5999
CANBERRA Venue: Canberra Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre Season: 16-27 September Performance Times: Tues 6:30pm, Wed-Sat 7:30pm, Wed, Sat & Sun 1:30pm, Sun 6:30pm (times vary weekly) Prices: From $65.90 (Transaction fees apply) Bookings: canberratheatrecentre.com.au or (02) 6275 2700 Groups 4+ call (02) 6275 2727
BRISBANE Venue: Playhouse Theatre, QPAC Season: 30 September – 18 October Performance Times: Tues-Thurs 7pm, Fri-Sat 7:30pm, Wed, Thurs & Sat 2pm, Sun 3pm (times vary weekly) Prices: From $65 (Transaction fees apply) Bookings: qpac.com.au or phone 136 246 Groups 8+ call (07) 3840 7466
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