Lacuna (Griffin Lookout) ★★★★

Written by Eric Jiang. An Essential Workers Production in association with Belvoir St Theatre. Griffin Lookout. Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir. 30 Jul – 15 Aug, 2026.

“Memories, light the corners of my mind…” Take a trip down memory lane, literally, in the high-concept queer heist that is Lacuna. It’s part Charlie Kaufman, part The Daniels and 100% Griffin.

Claudia (Rachel Seeto) is underachieving. Struggling to find a job, dealing with a break-up with her girlfriend and trying to put on a good front for her mother, she stumbles into the underworld and finds herself a new gig working for Meng Po (Loretta Kung), the Goddess of Oblivion. Her job? Erasing memories from the living. And it turns out she’s pretty good at it. She starts to wonder if she can repair her relationship with her mother by carefully removing the memory of a fight they had.

Welcome to the Backrooms of Belvoir — and by that I mean the Downstairs Theatre, currently inhabited by Griffin. Lacuna sets itself in the liminal spaces of the mind to play with some very big questions, even if only briefly. Eric Jiang’s script is funny in all the right places, throwing off asides about the gig economy, job hunting, poets, the tensions of queerness in the Chinese diaspora and more as it makes its way to deeper questions about identity, memory and consent.

The real star of the show is the brilliant technical and design work this team have assembled in the Downstairs Theatre space. Hailley Hunt has once again produced a striking, simple set with real punch. The bright red backdrops, accented by Morgan Moroney’s eloquent lighting and Sam Cheng’s immersive sound, make this one of the most memorable stagings I’ve seen all year.

Rachel Seeto is great as the Gen Z Claudia struggling to find a footing in life, balancing wry comedic beats with a blend of angst that is nicely specific. She shifts neatly through the different landscapes, helping the audience go with her between worlds. Loretta Kung (playing the dual roles of the ethereal Meng Po and Claudia’s mum) gets to have fun as the strangely corporate-yet-incorporeal goddess who dips into meaningfully naff “HR” talk. As Claudia’s mum, she gets to lean into classic “Chinese mum” stereotypes but delivers the real emotions at the right time. Dominic Lui flips (literally) between full Lexapro-homo deadpan asides as Cedric and manic pixie dream-god as Tu’er (the patron saint of homosexuality). Moments do occasionally feel wooden, lacking emotional truth, but overall they find their way to their destination.

Lacuna is easily one of the best takes on “second-generation immigrant queer” storytelling I’ve seen on stage in a long time (no offence, but we don’t need any more playwrights staging their coming-out trauma with a slight cultural twist — yes, your parents’ generation didn’t understand queerness, we get it already). Jiang takes us one step further into the messy aftermath of coming out and how it takes time to heal. On top of that, he has sprinkled charming specificity over a big story hook. It’s great stuff.

My main complaint (and you know there’d be at least one, right?) is the rushed finale, which doesn’t quite fulfil the promise of the beautiful set-up. Already under 90 minutes long, Lacuna could use a more in-depth and satisfying emotional conclusion rather than the hasty retreat we currently get.

I’m glad I got to catch Lacuna near the very end of its run, but still a jam-packed performance. Do I suspect we’ll be seeing it again before too long? I hope so — this is one play I would love to see grow a bit bigger, deeper and more thoughtful with time.