Straight Panic (ATYP)

Written by Lachlan Parry. Presented by the Australian Theatre for Young People with support from Purple Tape Productions. The Popsy, ATYP. 16-27 Jun, 2026

Three short comedies combine to make up Straight Panic, the triptych of one-act plays by Lachlan Parry poking fun at the gays, the straights and most importantly, the 00s. It’s not deep, it’s borderline with its humour, and it’s devoid of meaning — but it passed the three-laugh rule.

From the travails of the staff at Myer trying to deal with cruising gays loudly fucking in the bathroom, to poor rich-kids of homophobic conservative politicians, and the “no homo” bros of Cronulla, Lachlan Parry flips the idea of “gay panic” around. Mocking heterosexual Sydney for the way it struggles to respond to its homo neighbours makes for easy comedic picking.

Director Lily Hayman aims for camp, sketch comedy and hits the mark (the transitions between the individual plays are as entertaining as the main action). The cast — Andrew Fraser, Evelina Singh, Esha Jessy, Pierse Cant and Emma Kew — lay it on thick with impeccable timing and silly voices, playing different caricatures in each story. Emma Kew in particular was a real standout for the sheer breadth of her roles.

The design team of Soham Apte, Daniel Herten and Tyler Fitzpatrick have delivered an effectively multipurpose space that manages to cover each story with a clean simplicity that stays visually interesting.

These three short stories show that playwright Parry understands structure and can work a joke. Combined with a good ear for dialogue, it’s a strong start, but Straight Panic feels less like a show and more like a writing exercise put on stage. Not all of the stories justify their near-identical sub-30-minute running time (the middle piece especially feels like it’s just running out the clock) and there isn’t much of a sense of message holding the three pieces together other than a single joke. Things get a little shakier with the writing that makes some glib choices with one piece set at the start of the 2005 Cronulla race riots, and another liberally using pejorative gay slurs.

Straight Panic has some genuinely funny, if juvenile, moments, but in the end doesn’t really make a case for its existence on the stage (other than to give the assembled talents some more experience). All theatre is ephemeral, but this feels more ephemeral than most.