In this very short radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 4 April 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst about Ageing: Results May Vary, a very funny Melbourne Comedy Festival show by Geoff Paine & Ross Daniels and mention, briefly, the Com Fest launch on April 16 of Rod Quantock: Comedy Warrior. 3min15
Click link above.
COMEDY FESTIVAL
Written & performed by Geoff Paine & Ross Daniels
At Bard's Apothecary, Crossley Place, Melbourne, until Sat 4 April 2026. 6.45pm
Melbourne Comedy Festival 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: **** (4)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 4 April 2026. KH
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| Ross Daniels & Geoff Paine |
Ross Daniels and Geoff Paine are two very funny, highly skilled performers. Now well past Seniors’ Card eligibility, they furiously plunder their own lives for material about ageing —and strike comedy gold.
The audience resembles an MTC matinee: a sea of greying heads nodding in recognition. Almost every gag lands, drawing hearty, knowing laughter from a predominantly over-55 crowd.
A brisk audience poll confirms Boomers (Yay, team!) and Gen X are firmly in charge, with only a smattering of younger attendees bravely holding their ground.
NB: No Gen Alphas were harmed in the making of this show. (If you don’t know, they’re babies!)
For 55 minutes, Paine and Daniels catalogue the indignities of ageing: statins, fish oil, calcium levels, prostate woes, and the twin betrayals of hair and memory loss. You can recall your childhood phone number — but not the name of that actor in that thing. You know — the one with the hair.
There’s a cheeky visit from the Grim Reaper, offering ominous (and darkly funny) reminders of what’s to come.
A running memory test — three words to retain until the end — has the audience muttering to themselves like exam candidates. Just in case.
There’s some deliberately daffy dancing, including a Nutbush with a game audience member, plus original songs about ageing and a cleverly titled Oasis medley that’s best left unspoiled.
It’s a short run, but the show deserves a longer life — or at least regular bookings at retirement villages. They could repeat it weekly; parts of the audience might find it fresh each time. Wicked.
This is sharply observed, warmly delivered identification comedy for older audiences. Flash your Seniors’ Card for a concession — and take the train while you’re at it. No MYKI fare required ‘cos PT is free for April.
Cast
Geoff Paine & Ross Daniels
Creative Team
Lighting & Sound Operator and walk-on performer: Matt …? (Forget his surname!) Ah! Campbell!
In this radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 21 March 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst about Little Absences by Grazia Marin, and about Maureen Hartley’s Life Achievement Award at Victorian Green Room Awards 2026.
It's about 7-8 mins.
THEATRE
Written by Grazia Marin
At Chapel off Chapel until Sat 21 March at 2pm & 7.30pm
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: **1/2 (2.5)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 21 March, 2026. KH
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| L-R: Piera Dennerstein, Janet Watson Kruse-Image by Bernard Peasley |
The premise and intention of Grazia Marin’s play, Little Absences, has great potential for a short play with a small cast, and some elements of this first season are successful. In an ageing population, many of us are faced with the declining health of parents and grandparents. It is a confronting and challenging experience.
Chris (Janet Watson Kruse) is an older woman suffering escalating dementia, but fiercely denying the increasing problems she has coping with living independently and alone. She struggles with basic tasks such as feeding and washing herself, keeping her house clean and the fridge stocked. However, she does manage to keep a secret stash of alcohol that she hides from her attentive, worried daughter, Jenny (Piera Dennerstein).
Chris has another precious secret that she keeps hidden even from her daughter: as a young woman she had some success as an emerging writer, particularly of poetry. In her demented state, she craves the creativity of the written word but wrestles with memory, language and the capacity to frame and retain an idea. It is heart-breaking to watch her struggling to retrieve that creative state – perhaps almost as distressing as watching her struggle with her alcohol abuse and inability to do the most basic activities.
Kruse is committed and immersed in this fraught but determined character, capturing her frustration and intermittent confusion. Dennerstein embodies the despair and concern of the daughter who respects her mother‘s wishes to be left alone but knows that her intervention is inevitable. An unexpected visitor, Alex (Veronicka Devlin), a young writer who crashed her motorbike nearby, provides some perspective and triggers Chris’s memories of her own writing.
This production, directed by Elnaz Sheshgelani, runs two hours with interval, but needs some vigorous and astute editing to reduce it to perhaps 70 minutes. The dialogue is unnecessarily repetitive, there are some logical inconsistencies, and the structure needs some reshaping.
The play lacks dramatic conflict and has limited dramatic tension and dramatic action. Most of the action is described rather than being “Now“ action. It needs more compelling revelations and stronger turning points in the narrative. All these issues make the play more like an extended monologue interspersed with some character interactions.
The daughter and the visitor’s roles could serve the action better, but perhaps more interesting would be having an actor to play various roles from Chris‘s past: her husband Frank and Eduardo, the exotic lover from her youthful sojourn as a writer in Spain. This actor could also play the visitor.
It is clear that Chris didn’t like her husband Frank, so it is surprising that she chooses to use him as her invisible confidant. It might be more interesting to see her savaging him in her memory with a real actor playing the character.
A flashback to the sensuality of her youth with Eduardo might add an interesting scene. The memories and dreams are captured only by a few slides, scenes of locations and characters and this could provide a visual background to other scenes, rather than being a distraction or interruption.
The fact that Chris was a successful writer when she was young, is insufficient. Perhaps there could be clear revelations about Frank’s extramarital affair and dysfunctional marriage.
Here’s another idea: Jenny’s song, based on Chris’s poem, Little Absences, could begin the play and punctuate it until we become aware, at the end, that it is a eulogy. This might give the piece a dramatic shape and a clear structure. The daughter could then become a kind of narrator, thus avoiding Chris having to constantly explain to us what she’s experiencing as a dementing, but determinedly independent woman.
However, much of the latter part of my review is dramaturgy, and my role here is to be reviewer and critic. There’s certainly potential in Little Absences but, at this stage, neither the script nor the production have fulfilled that potential.
By Kate Herbert
Cast
Chris - Janet Watson Kruse
Alex - Veronicka Devlin
Jenny - Piera Dennerstein
Creative Team
Writer - Grazia Marin
Director - Elnaz Sheshgelani
KATE HERBERT-3MBS-SAT-07-MARCH-2026
In this radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 7 March 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst and Phillipa Edwards about La Mama Theatre’s new program of theatre events and I talk briefly about Moongazing that I saw On Demand (on screen).
Click the link nelow to listen. Its about 7 mins.
Program 2026 Summary
Currently playing:
Back to Te Maunga -Courthouse
Some Secret Should Be Kept -La Mama HQ
Moongazing & Saints -On Demand
1. La Mama Presents: Feb, March, April, May
Productions: 1 month block, 2 shows per month -one show at La Mama & Courthouse,
Education (March & May) selected productions)
On Demand season to follow all 8 shows (Feb – May)
Support: Robert Salzer Foundation.
2. Play: Scratch, Explorations, Immerse: June, July, Aug
Scratch- a live platform for performance makers to test new ideas in front of peers and community
Support: Cybec Foundation
Explorations- Artists are given three nights of public presentation (both venues)
Immerse - deeply focused 12-week practice-led program for 16 mid-career writers
Support: Cybec Foundation, John T Reid Trusts, and the City of Melbourne Multi-year Arts Grants Program in partnership with Arts Centre Melbourne and Regional Arts Victoria.
Partnerships:
3. Hope Punk Climate Festival: 1-20 Sept (TBC.)
storytelling and skills development in climate advocacy and action,
Support: in partnership with Learning Experiences Program Science Gallery Melbourne and Griffith University's Performance Ecology Research Lab (P+ERL)
4. Melbourne Festival of Puppetry: 21-27 Sept
Support: City of Melbourne and Arts Centre Melbourne.
5. Melbourne Fringe Festival at La Mama
October
6. Cultural Conservation in Action: November: First Nations-led month. Directed by Glenn Shea.Conservation of our First Nation's story, songs and dances
7. Faradays: December
Party month: music, poetry, cabaret
A Carlton takeover
Support: Local Business Partnerships.
THEATRE ONLINE
Written by Maki Morita
At La Mama Theatre, La Mama On Demand until Tues 10 March 12.00am (Stage season finished 1 March)
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: *** (3)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 7 March 2026. KH
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| Anna Fujihara image Darren Gill |
Moongazing, written by Maki Morita and directed by Ari Angkasa, is elusive, visually striking and more felt than understood. It drifts between waking life and digital dreamscape, exploring what guidance means in an age of disembodied voices.
A young Japanese-Australian woman (Anna Fujihara) is tethered to her online adviser (Sean Yuen Halley), a kind of Siri-of-the-future; a sleek, insinuating presence that offers affirmation, correction and algorithmic comfort. Fujihara, as the young woman, is tightly coiled, perpetually mid-scroll, her body pitched forward over her phone. Her performance is considered, albeit too evenly pace and emotionally muted, with the character’s interior life more suggested than fully revealed. Halley’s digital oracle’s calm cadences are faintly menacing and tinged with control.
Hovering at the edges of the woman’s flickering world is a mysterious woman older than the hills (Yumi Umiumare), a dreamlike mentor who may be ancestral memory, alter ego or moon spirit.
Umiumare’s stylised Butoh movement is slow, sinewy and exquisitely controlled and provides the production’s beating heart. Each gesture unfurls with ritual deliberation: a hand tremors, a spine curves, a foot roots to the earth. Umiumare doesn’t so much enter a scene, as seep into it. Her presence feels elemental, in contrast to the slick, oily digital patter.
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| Yumi Umiumare - image Darren Gill |
The design is spare is shaped by evocative lighting that bathes the stage in lunar washes and pockets of shadow that breathe with the performers. Pale light halos Umiumare’s white-painted form, while cooler, sharper tones delineate the technological realm, subtly reinforcing the play’s thematic divide.
Angkasa’s direction emphasises this visual and physical quality, although the dramaturgy occasionally wanders, the pace and rhythm lack variation and scenes accumulate, rather than building dramatic tension or action. Its central metaphor resonates: the moon as guide, algorithm as false prophet. Certain images in this production linger: a body folding and unfolding like a tide, a pale face lit by an unforgiving light. It is a meditation rather than a manifesto.
By Kate Herbert
Cast
Anna Fujihara
Yumi Umiumare
Sean Yuen Halley
Creative
Team
Writer: Maki Morita
Director: Ari Angkasa
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| Yumi Umiumare - image by _Darren_Gill |
In this radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 21 Feb 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst and Phillipa Edwards about two productions: Cluedo at Comedy Theatre and The Book of Mormon that returns to the Princess Theatre, Melbourne.
MUSICAL THEATRE
Book, Music & Lyrics by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez & Matt Stone
At Princess Theatre until 31 May 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***** (5)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 21 Feb 2026. KH
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| Nick Cox, Sean Johnston, The-Book-of-Mormon_credit_Daniel-Boud |
The Book of Mormon is a wickedly hilarious, irreverent, scandalous and shocking musical that is South Park on steroids. This is a gleeful assault on organised religion – more specifically, Mormonism and its peculiar history, religious text, missionary practices, cultural colonisation and – well – everything, really.
On the stage, the chorus of white-shirted Mormons is relentlessly grinning, terminally perky and super-camp! From the first brazen door knock in the song, Hello!, The Book of Mormon announces its missionary zeal — and this razor-sharp Australian cast answers with blistering comic precision and vocal confidence.
Created by Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez, this award-winning juggernaut remains as outrageously transgressive as ever and this Australian production is polished to a high sheen. The ensemble is a single, sharply pressed organism; every raised eyebrow, every snappy turn and door-slam is performed with military / missionary precision.
The pairing of the stitched up Elder Price (Sean Johnston) and goofy, incompetent Elder Cunningham (Nick Cox) provides stark comic contrast. Johnston’s clarion tenor soars with self-regarding confidence in I Believe, and he balances arrogance with boyish conviction. Cox, by contrast, makes Cunningham’s shambling doctrinal improvisations feel dangerously spontaneous. Cox’s elastic physicality and beautifully judged hesitation turn absurdity into an art form. Their chemistry drives the evening with polished certainty colliding with chaotic invention.
Paris Leveque brings luminous warmth, disarming sincerity and unaffected grace as Nabulungi. As Mafala Hatimbi, Simbarashe Matshe balances dignified authority with dry humour, anchoring the African village scenes with welcome gravity. As Elder McKinley, Tom Struik delivers Turn It Off with bright-eyed repression and tap-dancing precision, and his crisp movement and honeyed tone transform denial into high camp bliss. The audacious ensemble number, Sal Tlay Ka Siti, sung by the African villagers, wickedly and hilariously challenges God’s mercilessness.
Casey Nicholaw’s choreography is deliciously ironic Broadway razzmatazz knowingly deployed for subversive ends and the co-directors, Parker and Nicholaw, put the foot firmly on the accelerator in the production. The pastel optimism of the design combined with those wide smiles and wholesome Americana, makes the show’s detonations of profanity and pageantry even more naughtily delectable.
More than a decade on, the satire still bites. Yet beneath the profanity and pyrotechnics is incisive socio-political commentary and a generous heart. Melbourne roared its approval. This five-star return season proves that outrageous comedy, when executed with this level of craft, still feels thrillingly alive.
By Kate Herbert
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| Cast, The-Book-of-Mormon_credit_Daniel-Boud |
Sean Johnston -Elder Price
Nick Cox - Elder Cunningham
Paris Leveque -Nabulungi
Tom Struik - Elder McKinley
Simbarashe Matshe -Mafala Hatimbi
Augie Tchantcho - The General
Matthew Hamilton- Mission President
Creative Team
Book, Music & Lyrics -Trey Parker, Robert Lopez & Matt Stone
Co-director - Trey Parker
Co-director and choreographer - Casey Nicholaw
Set design -Scott Pask,
Costume design -Ann Roth
Lighting design - Brian MacDevitt
Sound design - Brian Ronan.
Orchestrations -Larry Hochman & Stephen Oremus.
Music direction and vocal arrangements - Stephen Oremus
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| Cast, The-Book-of-Mormon_credit_Daniel-Boud |
Act I
Act II
Tomorrow Is a Latter Day Elder Price, Elder Cunningham, Nabulungi, Company
THEATRE
Written by Sandy Rustin (additional material by Hunter Foster & Eric Price) based on the screenplay by Jonathan Lynn
At Comedy Theatre until 15 March 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: **** (4)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat. 21 Feb 2026. KH
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| Cast Cluedo: image Jeff Busby |
If you recognise the classic reference to “Colonel Mustard in the library with the lead pipe”, Cluedo the show for you. This production, directed by Luke Joslin, is a riotous, breakneck adaptation of the beloved board game, transformed into a comedic masterpiece that's as witty as it is wickedly entertaining. It's a glorious romp that twists a familiar premise into something utterly fresh, proving that a classic murder mystery can still surprise – especially when it’s this funny.
This cleverly constructed stage play by Sandy Rustin, based on the screenplay by Jonathan Lynn, has a narrative much like the game. Six eccentric strangers are invited anonymously to Boddy Manor for a dinner party, only to find themselves embroiled in a rapidly escalating series of murders. From the moment the lights dim, the stage is set for a thrilling, high-paced whodunit that is littered with secrets, lies, deceptions and false identities.
What unfolds is a gleeful parody of an Agatha Christie locked-room murder mystery with a dash of Oscar Wilde’s drawing-room wit and the physical comedy chaos of The Play That Goes Wrong. The versatile cast embodies a collection of outrageously broad comic characters.
We meet the pompous, dim-witted Colonel Mustard (Adam Murphy), the disgraced, lecherous Professor Plum (David James), the seductive, scheming Miss Scarlett (Olivia Deeble), the pious, hysterical Mrs. Peacock (Genevieve Lemon), morbid, mysterious Mrs. White (Rachael Beck), and awkward, anxious Reverend Green (Laurence Boxhall).
Joslin’s tight and deft direction orchestrates the intricate comedic machinery with precision, and each actor delivers rapid-fire dialogue and witty quips with sharp timing, committing wholeheartedly to the fast-moving action and often outrageous slapstick physicality.
The undeniable star turn belongs to Grant Piro as Wadsworth the butler, and his audacious performance is a masterclass in comic technique. His solo replay of the entire convoluted narrative, a breathless recap delivered with lightning speed and flawless character transitions, is a feat of physical and vocal virtuosity that had the audience roaring. Equally delicious is his prolonged death scene, a truly theatrical and utterly hilarious display that showcases his impeccable comedic timing.
Cluedo isn't just a play; it's an experience. It’s a genuinely riotous evening that delights in its own cleverness and the sheer joy of performance. Don't miss this hilariously deadly affair.
By Kate Herbert
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| Cast Cluedo :image Jeff Busby |
Creative Team:
