Moongazing (Online) REVIEW 4 March 2026 *** (3)

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

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.

 

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

 

Yumi Umiumare - image by _Darren_Gill