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A Twist Of Fate Christmas Special

16/12/2025 Oscar Bray🌟🎭

A Twist Of Fate Rating

★★★★★

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T’was the night of Scary Goats Theatre’s A Twist Of Fate Christmas special. All through the Motley Bauhaus cellar, such a merry and full audience was stirring that you wouldn’t have guessed that the company only kicked into gear roughly a year ago. Having seen a past Twist Of Fate season in May, I understood the format and was keen to see more: a series of four short plays inspired by The Twilight Zone and centred around a devastating twist. After only half a year, I was delighted to see that the company has further honed a unique brand of camp, engrossing indie horror with a pool of talented writers and actors.

The night opened with Emily Morey’s play ‘Naughty Nicholas’, in which a little boy is threatened with ‘no Christmas’ after setting fire to the family Christmas tree. He decides to build his own robotic Santa to wreak vengeance on those written on his personal naughty list. The physical acting from all cast members, from the ‘children’ to the janky mechanical Santa, was delightful. While some of the fighting between the main character and his sister felt a bit rushed, it wasn’t enough to detract from the story. I found myself wondering if the boy’s character was too unsympathetic, but luckily, it turned out his abominable Santa had similar concerns…

The second play, ‘Prisoners of the Season’ (written by Lore Burns) opens on four soldiers tied up by the wrists and neck with no memory of who or where they are. It was easy to guess the twist, but the fun came from watching the characters slowly figure it out. Once again, the physical acting was a highlight, and the ensemble’s sense of comedic timing was immaculate. Some of the actors had false moustaches that came loose, but the way the performers leant into and improvised around that gaffe was downright impressive and had the audience on their side in a heartbeat.

‘Office Party’ by Richard Mealey takes place at a Christmas celebration in an office that just so happens to be run by the offspring of the Christmas demon Krampus. As a holiday treat, he tempts Dylan, the office dogsbody, to punish a coworker who almost definitely killed someone for fun. This play was my favourite in terms of its writing and direction. It signalled a darker turn as we saw commentary on toxic masculinity and what is deemed as acceptable in corporate environments. The context and stakes were revealed in a gradual and satisfying way, there’s some fun puppeteering when ‘Krampus’ appears in the story, and the set and sound design were used very effectively to create a creepy build to an eerie ending that left me wanting more.

The final play, ‘Nineteen Eighty Clause’, was directed and written by Chloe Towan, who also emcees the Twist Of Fate series. A bunch of Christmas elves work tirelessly yet happily in Santa’s factory until one worker, Jangles, becomes so sleep-deprived that she starts hallucinating. This leads her to discover – with the help of a rogue elf named Sparky – that everyone in the workshop has been brainwashed into working for Santa, who turns out to be a cartoonishly cruel gangster. The corporate satire here is much more pointed and turned on the audience as we are made to question our own consumption habits around the holiday season. The romantic chemistry between Sparky and Jangles felt a bit contrived, but as the play itself points out with a fakeout ending: it’s Christmas, and a bit of positivity is sometimes needed to get us through the dark times. Overall, the social commentary is sharp while still having an optimistic message.

After five seasons of A Twist Of Fate and two Melbourne Fringe shows this year, this Christmas edition of Scary Goats’ most popular series felt like a well-deserved victory lap. Chloe Towan and her collaborators showed how they have earned their stripes by consistently creating tongue-in-cheek horror that pushes the constraints of indie theatre spaces without bursting the envelope. I cannot wait to see what they do next year, and I’ll certainly be looking forward to more than a few twists in their shows.

To book tickets to A Twist Of Fate, please visit https://www.eventfinda.com.au/2025/a-twist-of-fate-christmas-special/melbourne/carlton.

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TWO

21/12/202516/12/2025 Oscar Bray🌟🎭

TWO Rating

★★★★★

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Melbourne’s queer theatre scene is growing bolder and more joyful with every passing year. However, with widespread acceptance and marketability, there is always a risk of falling into complacency. As a trans playwright, I’m well aware of this ‘tolerance trap’, so I was excited to see a new play with a protagonist as grey in their morality as they are in their gender presentation. Add themes of queer family dynamics and the societal treatment of AFAB bodies into the mix, and you have a recipe for a fascinating comedy. The execution of Two, directed and written by Artemis Muñoz, however, left much to be desired in terms of the writing, set design, and performances.

Two’s protagonist, Kit (Sienna Macalister), is polyamorous, non-binary and newly pregnant. Excited as they are to be a parent, they quickly grow sick of people’s questions about their baby’s gender/sex/genitals. During a particularly tense get-together, they lie to their mother (Rebecca Morton) and announce that they are having twins, a boy and a girl. This temporarily fields uncomfortable conversations with Kit’s family, but strains relations with their partners (Vasi Devi and Marz Cooper) and creates further issues once the (singular) child is born. Will Kit’s family, chosen and biological, survive the fallout?

When creating such an esoteric plotline, there’s a tricky balance between getting your themes across and not lecturing your audience. Unfortunately, I felt that Two fell off the latter side of that tightrope, especially when it came to Kit’s frustration with their mother. It often felt as if the script was insisting that we dislike the mother through prolonged rants from Kit, instead of letting the audience infer ways in which her microaggressions impacted her child. This didactic writing extended to other scenes that fell into a predictable pattern: someone makes an offensive comment, Kit calls them out, they double down, Kit gives them a scolding.

The staging also didn’t help with character connection because the space felt too wide. By using various side set pieces along with an expanding central frame, the actors felt so physically distant from the audience that it was hard to connect with their intimate scenes. The blocking often seemed stiff and aimless, with characters stuck standing around in scenes they didn’t fully belong in and a lack of opportunities for the actors to make eye contact with each other. A more closed-off stage and further opportunities to sit in moments of silence would have made it easier to connect with characters who are, on paper, fascinating.

Two still has moments where it lives up to the premise’s promise, especially after Kit’s child is born. The scene where Kit gives birth was a visceral showcase of Macalister’s acting, using a luminous ball as a stand-in for the baby was a beautiful symbolic choice, and there was a greater sense of emotional weight as certain character arcs wrapped up. The play’s penultimate scene with Kit and their mother was one of the only times when the mother felt fully sympathetic. It truly seemed that she didn’t fully understand the weight of her actions and that she had the potential to do better. It also brought home a more complex message about ‘cutting off’ loved ones: it isn’t easy on anyone and it’s never anybody’s first choice, but it can still promote the possibility of change.

Two is a play with many interesting things to say that needs further confidence in saying them. The writing comes across as lecturing at points, which could be mitigated by further drafting and less nervousness in the performances. I also think a smaller, more intimate venue would benefit the cast and audience. I would be interested in seeing a future production, and if the premise of the show resonates with you then you may enjoy it in its current form, but it could reach many more people with further polish.

To book tickets to TWO, please visit https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2025/two.

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Jumping About All Over The Place

29/11/2025 Kat Skarbek🌟🦉

Nihilistic Optimism on Trampolines Rating

★★★★★

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‘Nihilistic Optimism on Trampolines’ is undoubtedly one of the most unusual plays I’ve seen this year. Whilst heavy on the nihilism (and light on both optimism and trampolines), it was an original and genuinely imaginative reworking of the supposed origins of the classic novel ‘Frankenstein’.

The production blended text from Mary Shelley’s novel with excerpts from her personal journals adding some emotional depth to the relationships depicted. It also set the whole thing, hilariously, in ‘Trampoline World’ a place of suffocating monotony and lacklustre job prospects. The cast threw themselves into the story with enthusiasm and full physical commitment and for the most part the chemistry between them worked well. The performance of Mary (played by Gabrielle Ward) was a standout, but honourable mention should go to the comic relief of Byron (Eleanor Golding), who brought some levity to the darker moments.
While the production lacked polish, any real production values and occasionally slipped into feeling a little improvised, it also aimed high. Reworking a classic text is extremely difficult to do with originality unless you commit fully and take creative risks. To their credit both the writer and cast were clearly swinging for something clever and nuanced.

Where the show really excelled was in its depiction of the sheer monotony of customer facing work. The endless repetitive conversations. The glazed interactions. The joy of mopping up vomit while being surrounded by screaming children and huffy parents. Much of the audience would have recognised their own flashbacks to those teenage jobs where commitment was low, wages even lower and the tangled crushes and camaraderie among staff were the only things getting you through the shift.

Where the show struggled was in clearly communicating the heart of the story. My theatre partner had not read Frankenstein and most certainly was not aware of Mary Shelley’s dramatic Geneva holiday with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and Mary’s sister, Claire. Which means he also had no reference for the dark emotional chaos that surrounded Mary’s relationship with Percy at that time, nor that the trip, (and her recurrent horrific nightmares), became the impetus which inspired her story – so those little nods to that experience, though explored in the play, were far too easy to miss.

As someone who has read the novel, seen the films and even watched ‘Rowing with the Wind’ a period film which dramatises the strained and sometimes unhinged relationships between the four (suggesting, as it does, that much of it was fuelled by both drugs and rather free sexual relationships between them all), I had a much easier time connecting the dots. For audience members without that context, I imagine the play would feel disjointed and confusing. The plot is fragmented and sometimes hard to track even for those who do know the backstory. The jumps between contemporary speech and period speech and the sudden segues between the tangled lives of the staff of Trampoline World and the feverish imaginings in Mary’s mind were not always smooth. Despite solid acting the heart of the play felt obscured under the sound effects, jarring lighting shifts and literal jumping around. In reference to the trampolining side of things, I would note that there wasn’t a whole lot of trampolining in the show and none of it was of a particularly entertaining or acrobatic nature – I was expecting something a little more exciting in that respect.

On a final positive note, the live band deserves acknowledgement. Their music added atmosphere, drive and emotional colour to the play and helped anchor scenes that might otherwise have floated away completely.

Ultimately this one was a swing and a miss for me, but with the recognition that it was highly original, and original thinking should always be applauded.

To book tickets to Nihilistic Optimism on Trampolines, please visit https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2025/nihilistic-optimism-on-trampolines.

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The Haunting of Spook Mansion (By Ghosts)

15/11/2025 Annie Zeleznikow⭐

The Haunting of Spook Mansion (By Ghosts) Rating

★★★★★

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The Haunting of Spook Mansion follows author and ghost sceptic, Prof Adrian Chambers (Peter Houghton). Chambers is approached by Beth Jackson (Emily Taheny) with an offer he cannot refuse, $500,000 for him to spend the night at Spook Mansion! Chambers reluctantly accepts the offer, and haunting ensues. Haunting if full of silly puns and not too scary jump-scares, which are terrifically balanced by the chemistry of Houghton and Taheny.

To get to my seat for this show I entered through the stage, which effectively began the immersion into the spooky haunting. The energy in the room was electric. Beginning slowly as a silly parody of a spooky movie, this show leans into horror tropes to subvert expectations and heighten the impacts of the truly scary things in life, emotional vulnerability and death! Spook Mansion is truly camp core. At 75 minutes with no intermission, this silly show was the perfect length, allowing for some thrills, and lots of laughs.

Directed by Russel Fletcher, the technical timing and coordination set up the audiences to enjoy the right amount of haunt; with minimal screams and maximum emotional impact. The tight direction combined with excellent lighting (Jason Bovaird) and sound (Stephen Gates) meant I was sufficiently spooked throughout the show. The sound and lighting allowed the twists and turns to make a powerful impact. The decision to have complete blackouts between scenes allowed Bovaird to enhance the lighting impact, and deepen the spooky story telling.

The characters of Spook Mansion are met with a wild evening, filled with stories and inevitably numerous puns. Michael Ward (writer and producer) fit as many puns the show could accommodate. Ward did this in an attempt to cram Spook Mansion full of jokes, leaving it relatively free of spirits from the great beyond. Ward defaulted to storytelling as a dependable way to scare the audience. Ward and Fletcher utilised the characters themselves, rather than cheap scary tricks, to push and pull the tension of the show. Ward and Fletcher commendably conveyed the real horrors of the world, not complying to mandatory health and safety audits.

To book tickets to The Haunting of Spook Mansion (By Ghosts), please visit https://chapeloffchapel.com.au/show/the-haunting-of-spook-mansion-by-ghosts/.

Photographer: Darren Gill

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