Theatre Festival - Whats The Show

The Butcher, The Baker’ Serves Up Role-Shifting Revelry

12 February 2025 Megan Davis

The Butcher The Baker Rating

★★★★★

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From the opening notes, The Butcher, The Baker immediately transports you into a world reminiscent of 1930s European cabaret—glamorous, provocative, and deeply steeped in the tradition of Weimar-style performance. Written, composed, and musically directed by Ella Filar, this production is both a showcase of exuberant musicality and a shocking exploration of sexuality, identity, and the fluidity of roles that people inhabit.

Directed by Kevin Hopkins—who first encountered the script while in the Czech Republic—The Butcher, The Baker carries a distinctly European flavour. Hopkins’s stated fascination with the piece’s “grotesquery and absurdism” is evident in his staging. The narrative follows three focal characters: Honey Valik (portrayed by Natasha Broadstock), an artist deeply invested in her craft; Alex Summers (played by Claire Nicholls), a brain surgeon; and Johnny Agostino (Fletcher Dyson), a butcher who captures both character’s imaginations. Threading the story together are two captivating narrators, Myf Powell and Bruce Langdon, who serve as muses and as the voices of subconscious (and sometimes very conscious) desires.

What makes The Butcher, The Baker especially compelling is how it shifts seamlessly between riotous humour and unexpected shocks. In one moment, it revels in playful innuendo and high-spirited wordplay; in the next, it confronts the audience with overt sexuality or sudden shifts in character roles—often leaving you unsure whom you’re meant to be rooting for. This is intentional: the show’s dada-esque edge delights in keeping viewers off-balance, forcing us to question the “meaning” behind both words and actions on stage.

Throughout, Filar’s score is vibrantly eclectic. One moment, you might hear a quick staccato reminiscent of German dance halls; the next, soaring operatic passages or lively jazz. The band—**Martin Khromchenko and Lucke Schreiber on saxophones, Lyuba Khromchenko on violin, Ella Filar on keyboard, and Christos Linou and Bradon Payne on percussion—**heightens the sense of off-kilter fun, playing behind a curtain in costumes that evoke both a bustling kitchen and a risqué soirée. It’s a deliberate collision of worlds, perfectly reflecting the script’s thematic juxtapositions.

The production is a tight 75 minutes, ensuring audiences never have the chance to lose focus. At times, you might catch yourself marvelling at the sheer cheekiness of the dialogue and lyrics, only to be hurled into the next song or scene before you can fully process what just transpired. As you watch these characters grapple with their obsessions, desires, and identities, you may feel that you’re taken on a ride rather than asked to pick sides. This experience becomes more explicit when reading through the printed lyrics and programme after the show.

Chris Molyneux, the technical manager, deserves commendation for crafting a production that feels seamless yet offbeat. Lights and sound create an immersive environment, supporting the transitions between the boisterously funny and the unabashedly sensual.

If you’re seeking a conventional storyline, The Butcher, The Baker may throw you off-guard. But for anyone who revels in cabaret’s capacity to shock, surprise, and delight, this show is a feast. It’s a testament to a distinctly European tradition of theatre—a kaleidoscope of humour, sexuality, and absurdity that leaves you both entertained and intriguingly disoriented.

As Director Kevin Hopkins notes, this play’s “unpredictable plot” and “strange characters” offer a fresh, modern slant on old-world cabaret. With gender identities and roles under the spotlight, it feels very much of this moment, even as it channels the spirit of another era. Ultimately, The Butcher, The Baker is fun, fast-paced, and a tantalising entry in the Midsumma Festival line-up—and a wild ride well worth taking.

To book tickets to The Butcher The Baker, please visit https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2025/the-butcher-the-baker

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Megan Davis

Barking Up the Right Tree

7 February 20257 February 2025 Kat Skarbek

My Queer Spiritual Entropy Rating

★★★★★

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The Motley Bauhaus is a tiny theatre at the back of a large pub in Carlton. Its intimate nature lends itself to powerful storytelling and heartfelt performances, and that’s exactly what ‘My Queer Spiritual Entropy’ (a play by Holly Rowan & The Wilderbeans) amply provides.

We are welcomed into our seats by an accompaniment of whimsical folk music played live by three child-like nature creatures. The creatures reveal themselves to be ancient trees and through music and story they begin to share with us the delights of the natural world and their places within it. We are educated about the hermaphroditic nature of some trees which possess both male and female parts within themselves and is something which makes that tree truly special, giving it the ability to self-fertilise and reproduce without external pollinators, ensuring its species survives.

However, this same natural and special ability in trees becomes something of deep concern when it happens in humans. Indeed, it becomes not just concerning but deeply antagonistic when anything happens outside of the binary of male and female in humans.

To help us understand that differences are natural and not something to be feared, the tree shares the tale of a little girl called “Holly’ who was once happy, wild and free, revelling in her unique nature but who slowly, little by little, squashes herself into the tiny gender box assigned and deemed appropriate by society, even as it slowly suffocates her. Holly is berated for being ugly, unnatural and ‘wrong’, rejected for not being a ‘proper’ female. Holly is told that their true nature is unnatural and offensive to the family, society and world in which they live. So they try to be ‘good’ and ‘fit in’, but it slowly erodes their sense of self and their connection to their true selves and makes them desperate, self-destructive and terribly lonely.

If it sounds heavy in parts, that’s because My Queer Spiritual Entropy calls attention to the lived experience of many gender-diverse people and is at times confronting, forcing us to look at our own behaviour, beliefs and binary-centric attitudes to the lives and gender, non-conforming ‘choices’ of our queer folk. At other times, the show is amusing, poking pointed but good-natured fun at the accepted roles of men and women in our society and challenging our unconscious compliance with those ideologies. Plus, nothing is funnier than a little nip at the narcissistic dark side of the personal development world, which was a highlight for me.

As a theatre-goer who was, at first, a little worried the show might disappear too much into ‘experimental’ with a side of ‘end of year school play’, I was both surprised at the complexity of the non-binary narrative and genuinely moved in several places – in particular when Holly begins to find acceptance both inside of and outside of themselves. My theatre-mate, for whom this is a lived experience, found himself reflected very clearly in the material and also shed a tear or two – such was the power of the music, the silliness, the playfulness and the raw beating heart of this eccentric, edgy but very poignant play.

I believe we, as a society, have to do better in many ways, and right now, one way in which we can do better is by learning to shake off the chains of the ‘two gender’ binary because beyond ‘man’ and ‘woman’, in the complex and often challenging landscape of queer identities, there is a vast community of people whose voices deserve to be heard. I urge you to listen.

To book tickets to My Queer Spiritual Entropy, please visit https://www.midsumma.org.au/whats-on/events/my-queer-spiritual-entropy/

Photography: by Anais Stewart

This year’s Midsumma Festival runs from 19th Jan to 9th Feb. For more information, please visit https://www.midsumma.org.au/.

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Kat Skarbek

Hot White Kiss

5 February 20255 February 2025 Savannah Douglas

Hot White Kiss Rating

★★★★★

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Written and directed by James WF Roberts, Hot White Kiss is an hour-long play focusing on five individuals, all sporadically linked through polyamorous & bisexual relationships with each other. Yet sparking and fuelling their individual flames isn’t oxygen, but the dangerous elements of addiction, abuse, trauma, and self-destruction.

The story, stemming from a poem Roberts previously wrote, is no stranger to The Butterfly Club. It now returns almost a year later as part of the Midsumma Festival and with a larger cast. Sticking with its previous venue proves to be an asset, as Hot White Kiss’ gritty themes fit perfectly with the grungy, basement-esque setting of the Club.

The show follows Leena, a heroin addict who cannot see the harm she’s inflicting on herself and others, and John, a wannabe poet trying to get out of the harmful addictions he’s found himself dealing with, including Leena. Surrounding them is Cilla, a drug-dealer who is obsessed with controlling Leena’s life, and a married polyamorous couple (Bill & Taylah), who see the harm from a far but do little to help.

Savier D’Arsie-Marquez (John) and Olivia Buckton Smith (Leena) stand out as the two main characters, who appear to have no positive reason to stay together. Not that it would stop them. They both portray a great amount of hurt and panic through their deliveries and expressions, that had them feeling like genuine people.

Most of the audience stayed wide-eyed and quiet throughout the performance of emotions on stage – but the few large laughs that broke through came from D’Arsie-Marquez’s ability to have fun with the dialogue in well-timed moments that made his character shine.

Considering the topics of the show, it felt there shouldn’t be a personified villain to the story. Yet Cilla’s (Bridgette Kucher) Joker-like smirk and constant manipulation of Leena often evoked that anger. There weren’t many redeeming parts that made us understand why Lenna stays with her, well portraying the abusive relationships you sometimes question from the outside.

The interpersonal relationships between each of the characters are constantly calamitous. All of them using the other people as person-shaped climbing block to get higher and leaving the other bleeding down below. But no one truly ends up on top.

However, a lot of the romances between characters felt slightly fabricated. It would have been enjoyable to see there be a bit more of a connection or backstory between the two leads. One of their most interesting scenes when reminiscing their past together was more like a tease of a flame that left you wanting to understand more of their relationship.

An unfortunate and constant jarring of the show came from the music played between scenes and set-ups. The audio’s sudden slice through the tension and emitting from the back of the theatre gave an illusion of a phone going off in the seats. By the time the understanding came that it wasn’t that, the emotional tether had already been cut. If it could fade in/out or come from behind the curtain instead, it would help keep the tension high.

Overall, the show was strong in the moments it felt grounded and real between characters. And though confrontations ended with not a lot of pay off and a few things left unanswered – it felt supportive of the less than comforting ending you often get when involved with addiction and toxic relationships like these.

And if they were hoping to raise addiction awareness additionally – one man leaving the theatre who noted, “Well…I’m never going to do heroin” certainly got the message.

To book tickets to Hot White Kiss, please visit https://thebutterflyclub.com/

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Savannah Douglas

Booze & The Bard: Macbeth! The Scotch Play

1 February 2025 Manuela Kacomanolis

Booze & the Bard: Macbeth! The Scotch Play Rating

★★★★★

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With the show’s title named Booze & The Bard: Macbeth, I had a feeling this wouldn’t be your typical Macbeth play. As part of Perth’s annual Fringe Festival, five young actors bring a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s infamous Macbeth to the stage.

Held at Four5Nine Bar at the Rosemount Hotel, a cosy little venue, the audience and the actors had no idea how the play would pan out. The concept reminded me a little bit of those “choose your own adventure books” where the reader’s choices determine the main character’s actions.

The play started off smoothly; all the standard lines are acted out with an injection of modern language sprinkled throughout (I loved this because, as someone who myself am not a big follower of Shakespeare’s plays, it made the play easier to follow and understand). When the play continued too smoothly, that’s when the actors shook things up a bit. There were drinking games (audience members could also participate if they wished), but either way, the actors are drinking throughout the play.

The major shakeup of the show was the spinning wheel. The spinning wheel had a variety of rules that the chosen actor had to follow when the tab landed on any of these rules, and this could happen at any moment throughout the entire show. The narrator would usually bring the spinning wheel to an audience member to spin.

For example, when it landed on ‘accent’ the chosen actor had to say his lines in an Irish accent for remainder of the play. I especially though it was funny when it landed on ‘western’ and the actor playing Macbeth, Ethan Milne, had to act out the rest of the play as though he was in a western movie, topping it off by wearing a poncho.

There were moments when the actors would be calling out ‘noooo’ when the spinning wheel was pulled out. I could feel their pain. It would not be easy to recite a Shakespeare play and then force put a spin on it at the last minute.

It’s ironic that Macbeth is actually a tragedy, but this show was far from tragic. The Booze & the Bard’s Macbeth, the Scotch Play was a fun, chaotic, silly, comedic retelling of a Shakespeare classic with many twists.

You certainly do not have to be a Shakespeare fan or understand Shakespeare to enjoy this show. It’s clear the actors were all having a lot of fun, and this naturally pulled the audience in.

If you are looking for a light-hearted show with plenty of laughs and, of course, drinking, then this is the show for you.

To book tickets to Booze & the Bard: Macbeth! The Scotch Play, please visit https://fringeworld.com.au/whats_on/booze-the-bard-macbeth-the-scotch-play-fw2025

This year’s Fringeworld Festival Perth runs from 17 January to 16 February. For more information, please visit https://fringeworld.com.au.

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Manuela Kacomanolis

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