Definitely NOT A Hungry Game: A Parody Musical (Sydney Fringe) ★★★

Co-created by Robbie Alexander & Freya Moore. Sydney Fringe. Turner Theatre, 3-8 Sep, 2024.

For a dose of film-related frivolity, Dramafreak Productions are deconstructing and generally taking the piss out of the book trilogy that became a film quadrilogy that spawned a prequel but is for legal reasons definitely not Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series. It’s crass, stupid and frequently hilarious.

Katniss (Freya Moore) is an attention seeking teen with “main character syndrome” that makes her less than popular with the residents of District 12. Her boyfriend, Gail (Jordan Batten) is an Australian hot bogan no-one understands. And there’s some guy named Peeta (Liam Faulkner-Dimond) that’s around. When Katniss’s sister is chosen for “the reaping” and must compete in the deadly ****** Games, Katniss steals the limelight by volunteering in her place. Together with that P boy, she must travel to the Capitol and fight for her life while singing songs and trying to be likable. 

This isn’t the first Hunger Games parody show and it probably won’t be the last, the YA series has had an enduring afterlife the Divergent series must envy. Creators & stars Robbie Alexander (who plays Effie Trinket in drag) and Freya Moore litter the story with jokes that range from sophomoric to quite subtle. The more you know the films and books (and general pop culture) the better. While it’s not all successful or totally coherent, there is a hell of a lot of fun to be had and more than enough gems to make it worth the price of admission. 

Alexander is terrific as Effie, nailing both the heightened performance level and the small asides, giving the show a firm footing (not easy in those heels). Alex Gonazlez gets to chew the scenery and get the biggest laughs as Katniss’s drunken mother and Phea Pennington stands out as the dim-witted Glimmer. But it is Faulkner-Dimond who gets to shine as the frequently interrupted and ignored Peeta. His ecstatic Tracker Jacker fever dream performance is one of the show’s true highlights, as is the show’s finale which veers off from the source material.

At over two hours long, the show is baggy with some jokes overplayed repeatedly and some scenes only exist to hit touchstones in the book/film but with judicious trims it could really zip along. The original songs work, none are earworms but they’re solid musical theatre numbers that keep the show moving. The humour is at times questionable, some of the queer jokes definitely need revisiting, but on the whole it’s a fun show.