Manuela Kacomanolis - Whats The Show

Joe White: Emotional Blackmale

10/02/2026 Manuela Kacomanolis🥉

Joe White: Emotional Blackmale Rating

★★★★★

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Back in his hometown for the 2026 Perth Fringe Festival, award-winning comedian Joe White delivered a semi-biographical performance that combines sharp observational comedy with an unflinching account of displacement, migration, and belonging.

The show is a departure from the regular routine of his other shows. Joe White: Emotional Blackmale is very personable as he reflects on his life from a refugee in Sudan to a stand-up comedian in Australia and becoming a first-time father.

A central theme of the performance is identity. White is Ethiopian, born in Sudan, and raised in Australia from when he was 10. He uses this pursuit for identity and wanting to belong into comedy. White’s delivery makes clear that the “identity crisis” is not an abstract concept but a lived reality and one driven by language barriers, racial perception, and the constant need to change oneself for other people’s comfort, including his name. Born Tilahun Hailu, teachers and children often had difficulty pronouncing his name and so the nickname Joe has stayed with him ever since. The choice of “White” as a surname then becomes the punchline. White explains that he selected it because most of his audience members were all white.

White does not skirt around the seriousness of his refugee background especially in this present time where immigration is such a hot topic. He touches on his family’s time as refugees in Sudan and the gruelling process of seeking humanitarian visas to come to Australia. These moments in the show shift the tone without derailing the performance.

White, one of six children to a single mother, retells his mother’s determination and strength in providing a better life for her six children. White’s treatment of the visa process is particularly effective because it highlights the procedural exhaustion that is the waiting, uncertainty, and bureaucratic hurdles, and the corruption which was behind his family’s applications constantly being rejected. An account which I found quite insightful.

It is evident from his show how much he truly appreciates his life in Australia, so much so that he proudly displayed his Southern Cross tattoo to the audience.

White is a proud Ethiopian Australian. Now a first-time father of an 8-month girl, he wants his daughter to be proud of her heritage too, Ethiopian-Malteser as he describes her as his partner is Maltese Australian.

Emotional Blackmale is a personable show with plenty of laughs and plenty of audience interaction.

To book tickets to Joe White: Emotional Blackmale, please visit https://fringeworld.com.au/whats-on/joe-white-emotional-blackmale-fw2026.

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I Am Grease Grillson

01/02/2026 Manuela Kacomanolis🥉

I Am Grease Grillson Rating

★★★★★

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I wasn’t sure what to expect as I entered The Jonesway Theatre in Northbridge to watch I am Grease Grillson, one of the many shows currently on for the Perth Fringe Festival.

For those who are unaware, the Fringe Festival is an opportunity for various performers and artists to showcase their talents.

Having met at clown school in France, yes there is such a thing as clown school, performer Elise Wilson and director Duncan Young teamed up for the creation of I am Grease Grillson.

You may come away from this show thinking what on earth was that all about. In this instance, it would be best to go to the show with an open mind.

The show opens with solo performer, Elise dressed in character as Grease Grillson in heavyweight lifting attire topping it off with a drawn-on moustache and body hair, lifting an elephant, not real of course as it’s all mimed.

The storyline is, by design or by limitation, a little thin. Grease Grillson, a heavyweight lifter who moves through life with a persistent belief that he is “not enough,” punctuated by flashbacks from his time in an orphanage through to his eventual success. The orphanage material usefully signals the origin of the character’s insecurity.

Nonetheless, as a performance grounded in clowning, mime, and physical comedy, it delivers consistent entertainment, proving that, even when the storyline is light, rigorous physical craft can carry the evening.

To book tickets to I Am Grease Grillson, please visit https://fringeworld.com.au/whats-on/i-am-grease-grillson-fw2026.

Photographer: Sophie Minissale

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The Chairs

26/11/2025 Manuela Kacomanolis🥉

The Chairs Rating

★★★★★

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The Chairs is a creative vaudeville, circus style play about an elderly couple, simply known as the Old Man and the Old Woman presented by The Melville Theatre Company and directed by Virginia Moore Price.

Written by Eugene Ionesco in the 1950s, it is quite an absurd tale in which the elderly couple reflect on their life over the 70 years they’ve been married. This indicated that they would be in their 90s. At the beginning I struggled to understand what was happening and their conversations seemed nonsensical. A sign of the deterioration of their memories and their minds.

The couple prepare to receive guests for a lecture of some sort which never eventuates and their guest of honour, the Orator. They frantically gather chairs for the guests and dump them onto the rotating floor in a comedic fashion. The guests, however, are invisible to the audience. Whether the old couple are imagining them or whether they are actually real to the couple, left me unsure.

The couple’s fragmented recollections and contradictory chronologies evoke signs of dementia. This is particularly evident when the Old Woman recalls having a son who died when he was a child and reflecting on the grief of losing a child but the Old Man recalls the couple not being able to have any children and instead reflecting on the grief of his mother’s death.

Although it is clear they both deeply care for each other, there are moments of regret and a sense now that their lives are very soon coming to an end. Throughout the play the Old Woman continuously reminds the Old Man how he could’ve been a head general or a head comedian much to both of their despair. The Orator Raven who whilst is visible to the audience throughout the entire play as he sits on the rotating floor, is only visible to the couple towards the end perhaps signifying death.

Ionesco gives plays into the delusional state of mind of the elderly couple by having them set in a circus ring with both dressed as clowns and the Old Man performing as a mime artist.

Zane Alexander and Solanje Burns deliver a phenomenal performance as the Old Man and Old Woman holding the attention of audience for the entire play without an interval. There were moments of interaction with the audience when they both tumble off the stage and weave themselves into the audience while they continue their nonsensical dialogue.

At the heart of The Chairs is two people longing to be seen and heard, trying to make sense of the lives they have lived.

To book tickets to The Chairs, please visit https://melvilletheatrecompany.au/current-production.

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Cats

14/11/2025 Manuela Kacomanolis🥉

Cats The Musical Rating

★★★★★

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The opening night of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats at the Crown Theatre, Perth, delivered a polished, high-energy revival that showcased the production’s enduring strengths of choreography and crystalline vocals.

The long-running musical has been entertaining audiences since 1981 but for prospective patrons unfamiliar with Cats, don’t attend the show expecting a plot or even any dialogue. You will have a much better appreciation for it if you go for the exquisite dancing, singing and overall visual extravaganza. Cats is more a sequence of character portraits of the feline characters stitched together by a very thin storyline about a Jellicle Ball for all the Jellicle cats.

The show made more sense when I discovered that it was based on a series of poems from TS Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” dating back to the 1930s. It is these poems that inspired the legendary Mr Webber to convert them into a musical.

I cannot fault any of the dancing or singing. The cast performed with remarkable precision and athleticism, sustaining demanding choreography. The unison work in the larger ensemble numbers was exceptionally tight. It is evident that the dancers are professional ballet and classical jazz dancers. The production’s success lies in the cumulative power of its choreography and vocal pieces rather than narrative complexity.

Bringing the cats to life are the dazzling costumes and richly detailed makeup which I was fortunate enough to see up close. Throughout the show, the performers would integrate themselves within the audience, purring, stretching and leaping up and down the aisles of the theatre.

The production’s scenic design embraces the junkyard setting, transforming the stage into an immersive, feline-sized world. An old oven, a rumpled shirt, car tires, these are rendered at magnified proportions so that the performers read unmistakably as cats in an oversized human environment.

The integration of car engine and police sirens sound effects and a sweeping “torch” effect as the cat ensemble scatter in hidden spots, transforms the junkyard into a living, reactive environment without relying on dialogue.

Gabriyel Thomas delivered a standout solo performance as the weary Grizabella The Glamour Cat, belting out the iconic Memory song.

Tim Haskayne was outstanding in his jazz ballet routine as the Magical Mr Mistoffelees who delivered a mesmerizing performance with impeccable control and grace.

I found it especially amusing and admire the dedication of one of the performers who remained on stage in character for the duration of the interval.

This staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats operates with a first-class polish that flows with effortless precision. It is more a mixture of a ballet performance and a musical rather than a conventional musical and in its entirety a form of art to enjoy.

To book tickets to Cats The Musical, please visit https://catsthemusical.com.au/tickets/perth/.

Photographer: Daniel Boud

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