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The rating system is simple:

★★★★★ – Terrific, world-standard. Don’t miss.

★★★★ – Great, definitely worth seeing.

★★★ – Good. Perfectly entertaining. Recommended. Individual mileage may vary.

★★ – Fine. Flawed and not really recommended, but you may find something to appreciate in it.

★ – Bad (& possibly offensive).

See more reviews over at The Queer Review.

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Written by Peter Shaffer. Daniel Cottier Productions in association with Bakehouse Theatre. KXT on Broadway. 21 Aug – 5 Sep, 2026.

Sex, religion, violence, horses – Peter Shaffer’s Equus throws all the things you’re not supposed to talk about at dinner parties (well, other than horses, they’re usually safe territory) into a psycho-drama that bucks at the numbing effect of modernity. The new staging at KXT on Broadway reframes the story through a more explicitly queer and body-focused lens that results in some unexpected shifts.

Psychiatrist Martin Dysart (J. James-Moody) is sent to see a troubled 17-year-old, Alan Strang (Ryan Yeates), who has blinded six horses in one night. As he tries to uncover the roots of the boy’s mental distress he unravels a complex psychology that has transfigured teenage faith and sex into a dangerously twisted brew. But can he help Alan live a “normal” life? What does that even mean? And why is Dysart jealous of this complicated, broken boy?

Director/Designer Brockman has taken Shaffer’s exploration of worship/fetishisation and amplified it into a full-throated, kink-forward affair. Dark and monochromatic, pulsing dance music, the stage is part night-club, part sex club, part nightmare. In place of the traditional horse-mask, the actor playing Nugget (Shalamah Tautaiolefue) is given a gimp mask. Alan’s devotion to Equus is no longer psycho-sexually fraught, it is a fully-embodied sexual awakening with disturbing shades of abuse. It’s a bold, all-encompassing vision that gives this Equus a fresh frisson of excitement. It’s not subtle, but as Dysart himself says, “Extremity’s the point.”

This is Brockman as full auteur, reshaping the text as boldly as the visuals. The biggest, most obvious change is the reframing of Nugget — replacing the traditionally muscled performer with, as Brockman describes it, “a fat, queer body,” approaching the themes of body and eroticism through a new lens.

And that skews the story in interesting ways. Shaffer’s text has always been a complex web of deep-rooted neurosis and competing compulsions, and this addition layers in new subtext that threatens to overcomplicate an already dense narrative. But for those invested in the story, it proves additive rather than disruptive.

James-Moody gives an outstanding performance as Dr Dysart, the conflicted psychiatrist suffering his own personal crisis. Dysart’s closeted sexuality, dealt with obliquely in the text, is made overt in his constant watching of Stephen Madsen as the Nurse. The beauty of the intimate KXT space is you can watch every thought and emotion flash across his face, the centrepiece of the whole story. In a thrilling alteration, Brockman has Dysart speak some of his closing dialogue, not to Alan, but to a shivering Nugget, drawing a fresh connection in the text that opens up the character of Dysart in new ways.

As the dangerous teen Ryan Yeates brings a much stronger sense of self-awareness to Alan Strang’s attempts at manipulation that highlight his innate intelligence. It shifts the character from a sense of “tormented innocence” into one of complicit guilt. This is Alan Strang as an incel whose sexuality is suppressed and twisted by a broken understanding of faith.

While this is by no means a definitive production of Equus, this is a confident, bold revisioning. It’s exciting to see a text be reconsidered with such a clarity – mining it for new angles. For me it wasn’t 100% successful, but the ambition is the thing. This is what Sydney theatre needs more of and marks Brockman as a director of note.

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.

Written by David Williamson. Ensemble Theatre. 31 Jul – 12 Sep 2026.

Ensemble plays things by-the-book with a staid revival of David Williamson’s 80s domestic/legal drama Top Silk.

Legal power couple Jane Fredericks (Rachel Gordon) and Trevor Fredericks (Nicholas Brown) have their intellects and their ethics tested on all fronts. At home, their son Mark (Samir Nasser) is failing to hit their own academic heights. At work, Jane, a legal aid lawyer, finds herself representing an old high school lover, Eddie (Jeremy Waters), on a drug charge. When she hears of a less-than-legal way to get his charges dropped, she has to wrestle with her conscience. Meanwhile, Trevor’s dreams of a political career might be helped if he represents a local media baron who-for-legal-reasons-is-definitely-not-named-Murdoch. As the two legal minds wrangle with their qualms, their marriage starts to slip through the cracks.

There are two questions I ask when watching a revival of a play: has it dated, and what is it saying to today’s audience? For Top Silk the answers are “yes” and “nothing new.” This moral labyrinth is far too simplistic for a contemporary audience, and its politics anodyne. What might have felt on-the-pulse in 1989, with its so-thinly-veiled-there’s-no-point characters of the time, and its 1980s view of a “strong independent woman,” feels a bit silly in 2026.

The strong ensemble are, by all measures, giving great performances as they work hard to breathe new life into the text. Rachel Gordon holds strong as the powerful/desirable/loving 80s superwoman (sans shoulder pads) at the story’s core. Nicholas Brown makes the supposedly bookish and unlikable Trevor… well, quite likeable actually, with a touch of political sleaze. Jeremy Waters has fun with the hapless incarcerated Eddie (and he gets some of the show’s best lines). Thomas Campbell goes full Rupert as the rich and manipulative Paul Bradley.

Williamson’s dialogue feels overworked and static on Ailsa Paterson’s legislatively cold set. The lines and set-up were so obvious I wanted to stand up and object – “Your Honor, the playwright is leading the witness!” Sound and lighting bring to mind 80s game show Mastermind and 90s TV hit Law & Order (you could practically hear the “dun-dun” between scenes). Partially this is a stylistic thing — the fashion of playwriting has changed, leaving Top Silk looking like your mum’s old dress. It’s cute, in an ironic way, but not something you’d take seriously.

It must be said that none of this seemed to bother the happy, packed-out Ensemble audience around me, who laughed on cue, giggled at the appearance of an old-fashioned credit card “click-clack” machine, and rode each twist of the plot with an audible “oh.” As with all of Ensemble Theatre’s David Williamson revivals and premieres, his loving audience is waiting for them.

Personally, I’d say this one is for the fans, or those who want to tick a notable Australian classic off their “to see” list. The lack of relevance or rediscovery in the production keeps Top Silk something of a museum piece for those looking for a hit of 80s drama.

Music by Jerry Bock. Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Book by Joseph Stein. Theatre Royal Sydney. 31 Jul – 3 Oct, 2026.

Some of London theatre’s most exciting modern talents bring their award-winning production of the classic Fiddler on the Roof to Sydney. Is it a “wonder of wonders,” a “miracle of miracles,” as the London critics thought?

In 1905, Jewish milkman Tevye (Troy Sussman) tries to look after his family of five daughters, find them good husbands, and set them up for a future in a rapidly changing world. When local matchmaker Yente (Sigrid Thornton) tries to match Tevye’s daughter Tzeitel (Freya Boltman) to a much older man, the old world and the new begin to collide. With his daughters proving more strong-willed than he imagined, Tevye fights to hold onto the best of tradition.

Lovers of big casts and full voices will get a thrill from the opening number, “Tradition,” which kicks in like a starting pistol. It’s been a while since the Theatre Royal has been engulfed in such a strong sound. Director Jordan Fein directs for emotion and layers the vocals on top — the result is a deeply human musical that feels both heartbreaking and elating. The addition of violinist Ben Adler as The Fiddler, a constant watchful presence, is the cherry on the cake.

Sussman’s Tevye finds the natural, good-natured comedy of the story without dipping into vaudeville. As his three strong-willed daughters, Freya Boltman, Ellen Ebbs and Caity Plummer settle into an easy innocence. Alexis Fishman similarly pitches Tevye’s wife, Golde, as a clear sitcom “harassed housewife” without veering into shrill stereotypes. The cast keep their Australian accents, which takes a second to get used to but becomes seamless, adding a sense of universality to the drama.

Many will come to Fiddler on the Roof with a sense of familiarity, whether from high school productions, the 1971 film, or its endless echoes in pop culture. First staged at London’s Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre before moving indoors to the Barbican, this production has amassed a run of five-star reviews and scored 13 Olivier nominations and three wins, including Best Musical Revival.

And it shows. Despite the move indoors, Tom Scutt’s simple but imposing set, dominated by a wooden canopy, has an epic quality, hinting at generations of history hidden beneath the soil — a connection to land Australians know well. When the canopy descends to form the chuppah, that connection deepens further. It’s majestic to look at, though you can’t help feeling a pang of FOMO for its original open-air staging, surrounded by trees and sunset colours, timed no doubt for “Sunrise, Sunset.”

Joseph Stein’s book remains sadly relevant, lacing in the growing threat of turn-of-the-century antisemitism as it swept across Europe. The sleepy village of Anatevka may try to ignore the outside world, but the forces of modernity push through regardless — for better or worse. It’s impossible not to view this production through the lens of current antisemitism, including the events of the Bondi shooting, which brought slightly heightened security to opening night. Fiddler may seem quaint by comparison, but that doesn’t dull its truth.

For a show that has rarely strayed far from Sydney stages, this Fiddler on the Roof feels worth revisiting. Try as you might, you’ll still be singing “If I Were a Rich Man” all the way home.

Sydney Opera House & Rix Management Presents. Sydney Opera House Studio. 24 Jul – 13 Sep, 2026.

Disco meets daring aerials in Velvet Inferno, the cabaret that mixes flirty and funny circus acts with four-on-the-floor beats.

The new incarnation of Velvet swings back into Sydney with some jaw-dropping acrobatics from an international cast, all set to the feel-good dance hits of disco. The playlist is the kind of soundtrack you’ll be familiar with from every party you’ve been to, laden with hits like ‘Relight My Fire’, ‘Play That Funky Music’, ‘It’s Raining Men’, ‘Last Dance’ and ‘I’m Every Woman’ — to be honest, it’s the kind of stuff I wish they still played in gay bars.

The visuals are a non-stop feast thanks to the combined work of designer James Browne and lighting designer Matt Marshall, who recreate the idealised dream of a disco. The costumes are a cascade of sequins and metallics, the lights multi-coloured and flashing, and the mirror balls abundant.

It all sets the stage for a varied ensemble of circus acts you might be familiar with from similar shows but are always entertaining to watch. Hair-rialist Zoë Marshall reminds us not to **** with a woman rocking a fierce ponytail. Craig Reid gives us comedy with some impressive quick-changes and a multifaceted hula hoop routine. Oleg Tatarynov stuns with his six-pack aerials with a side of boy-lesque. But my personal favourite of the acts was the death-defying extreme roller-skaters Yevhenii and Vlada from Duo Stardust, who had the crowd on the edge of their seats — I was getting scared for the front row. They’re a jaw-droppingly talented and sexy ensemble.

They’re joined on stage by a group of excellent vocalists — KYE, Emma Feliciano, Mateja Sardelis, Brendan Maclean and the icon that is Marcia Hines. They deliver big dance-floor vocals, which are unfortunately lost in a sound mix that prioritises beats over melodies. The best vocal moment comes in the form of a stripped-back rendition of ‘Staying Alive’, performed by Maclean with a solo banjo, that will break your heart.

One thing that is utterly flawless is the 6:30pm starting time. An early start and a tight 75-minute show — you’re out the door by 8pm. Music to my ears! If you’re in need of some hot gymspiration in these cold, wintery days, look no further.

Written by Nick Green. Australian Premiere. Mi Todo Productions. Qtopia. 22 Jul – 8 Aug, 2026.

Princess Diana’s place as a noted AIDS activist sets the scene for Casey & Diana, a predictable but moving drama that serves as a showcase for five great performances from actors who are now all on my “I’ll keep an eye out for them” list.

It’s 1991 and we’re in Casey House, an AIDS hospice in Toronto, Canada, when a new patient, Andre (Gabriel Alvarado), is admitted. He’s placed in a shared room with one of the longer-term residents, Thomas (Chad Traupmann) — a camp, talkative man with a biting wit. Under the watchful care of the no-nonsense Vera (Isabel Burton) and new volunteer Marjorie (Linda Nicholls-Gidley), the two men await their fate. But the hospice is abuzz with news… they’re about to get a visitor of royal standing. As the thought of meeting Princess Diana (Lib Campbell) gives the men a rush of excitement, Thomas’ joy is threatened by the reappearance of his estranged sister Pauline (Lucy Miller). He just has to keep it together for seven days till the Princess arrives…

Against my best efforts, I found myself getting teary at the end. I walked in knowing this was an AIDS drama set in the early 90s, and let’s be honest, it was never going to end cheerfully. But over the course of the play’s two hours and thirty minutes, the characters managed to get under my skin. Playwright Nick Green wins you over in the play’s closing moments with a sweetly circular beat that got past my cynical guard. It landed so beautifully thanks to the combined effort of a cast who balance the script’s humour with its serious heart.

Princess Diana’s activism during the AIDS crisis was hugely influential, and along with unlikely allies like Tammy Faye Bakker in the US, her empathy for those suffering helped break a lot of the stigma of the time. When Diana shook the hand of an AIDS patient at London’s Middlesex Hospital in 1987, it marked a turning point in public awareness that AIDS was not transferable by touch. She would make headlines again in 1989 by hugging a child with AIDS at a Harlem hospital. And on her final visit to Canada in 1991, she would visit Casey House. The specificity of the location isn’t particularly relevant to the story beyond its Canadian origins, and focusing on a less historic visit lets the attention fall on the people rather than the events.

Director Nancy Denis is a force of nature (if you saw Juicy Riot you know exactly what I mean), but here she disappears into the material, guiding the cast to emotionally raw performances that feel fully embodied. Reactions felt organic; characters felt whole. While the script had some clearly “stagey” scenes, they were grounded in real humanity. It’s the kind of seamless emotional experience you get when a strong cast is in sync with its director.

The cast is uniformly strong, but Chad Traupmann’s lead performance as Thomas deserves mention. Camp always hides a core of pain, which Traupmann understands, and his 80s-pop-culture-obsessed Thomas has the kind of sharp, cutting humour that reveals his inner turmoil. The role requires a mix of competing motivations on top of portraying an illness, and Traupmann (who I’m more familiar with as a producer rather than a performer) has created a nicely layered character.

Despite its length and production limitations, Casey & Diana puts its focus on character, and it pays off big time.

Written by Jane Harrison. World Premiere. Wharf 1 Theatre. Sydney Theatre Company. 18 Jul – 16 Aug, 2026.

Jane Harrison rewrites the established book on a key part of Australia’s colonial history, retelling the life of Bennelong from his own perspective and letting it ripple through time to 2026. But, you know, in a fun way.

In the suburbs of Parramatta, a thirty-something actor Sebastian Anderson (Guy Simon) is rushing home to do a self-tape audition. He wants to win the role of Bennelong in a new play, Bennelong in London (ooh meta!). Struggling to deliver his monologue into his phone, he off-handedly wishes the real Bennelong were there to help him out — and is shocked when Bennelong himself (Googoorewon Knox) appears before him, distinctly unimpressed with this NIDA graduate’s impersonation.

The historical Bennelong is known as the first Aboriginal man to travel to Europe and return to Australia. Beyond that, details are scarce, gleaned from reports written by early colonisers riddled with built-in bias and the racist assumptions of the time. Those written records are, in many ways, a fiction — an act of storytelling. With Bennelong in London, Harrison counters that narrative with a fiction of her own, one told from Bennelong’s point of view. It’s a balancing of the scales that asks us to think about the power of our stories.

To do so, Harrison sidesteps historical blame and heads for heart and humour. She plays with the man-out-of-time, odd-couple energy you’d find in sitcoms (it reminded me of episodes of Ghosts, or even bits of Bewitched) and it’s exactly what stops the play collapsing into a two-handed Wikipedia recitation. Bennelong himself speaks of his time and his captors with a forgiveness and perspective that keeps things light rather than accusatory.

This is a story, about a storyteller, hearing the story of another storyteller in order to tell the storyteller’s story. It’s in the onion-like layers of this narrative little tesseract that Bennelong in London has the most fun. Those in the acting profession will enjoy Harrison’s gleeful swipes at the industry’s more ludicrous affectations. Guy Simon is at his playful best as the actor chasing a gig. Bouncing off Bennelong’s impish provocations, he’s comedic foil and dramatic sounding board at once. As Bennelong, Googoorewon Knox brings intelligence and confidence to a figure history left mostly blank.

For much of the 90-minute running time I was happy just hanging out with these two, listening to the stories and banter, but it’s the final stretch — when director Ian Michael lets the drama and the storytelling escalate into something more theatrical — where the play truly lands. Trent Suidgeest’s lighting, Emma White’s stunning use of waratahs, James Peter Brown’s sound design, and Knox and Simon’s performances combine into something with real theatrical power. I wanted more of it.

Bennelong in London manages to stay warm and approachable while it talks about contentious moments in history, and that’s a balancing act that takes skill. Two entertaining performances, combined with technical excellence, prove that storytelling still has a real impact — oh, is that another layer to the onion? Damn, they’re clever…

Written by Isobel McArthur after Jane Austen. Neil Gooding Productions & Woodward Productions. Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre. 16 Jul – 30 Aug, 2026.

Another year, another comedy-riff on Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice! This time it’s Isobel McArthur’s Olivier Award-winning karaoke cover version that trades Austen’s incisive wit for brash anachronisms and pop bangers.

The schtick of PAPSO (apologies for the abbreviation) is that it turns Austen’s novel into an oral retelling by five maids, the kind of people overlooked in these grand sweeping Georgian romances. This means the whole cast play multiple roles jumping from scene to scene with some ridiculous quick changes.

Teo Vergara gets off relatively lightly playing the leading part of the feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet. Amy Lehpamer gets to play the pining Charlotte Lucas, as well as both Mr Bingley and his haughty sister Caroline, the latter of which is a scene-stealer. Kaori Maeda-Judge jumps from the broken-hearted Jane Bennet, to the rakish George Wickham, and best of all — to the imperious Lady Catherine. The diminutive Zoe Ioannou doubles the stressed Mrs Bennet with the taciturn Mr Darcy. Ruby Shannon gets the widest range of roles, as both Mary and Lydia Bennet, the creepy Mr Collins, and the loving Mrs Gardiner. It’s a top-notch musical/comedy cast and all five are exceptional.

McArthur’s script relishes highlighting the problematic issues of the day (like Wickham’s habit of abducting teenage girls) and joking about the sexism of the Bennet sisters’ predicament. After setting up the premise, that this story is being retold by the servants, McArthur lets this pretext slide, which is a shame — there would have been a rich vein of commentary to mine — instead the maids become narrators and a simple framing device instead. With only one attempt at any kind of social commentary (a solitary wry joke about immigration), McArthur is here to have fun, not preach, and thank god for that — with a running time of 2 hours 30 minutes the show doesn’t need to be any longer.

The karaoke moments give the show frequent bursts of colour and energy, but feel like a vestigial throwback to an earlier iteration of the show that is better suited to a smaller venue (the show has real “fringe hit” energy despite having originated at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre). Much of PAPSO feels slightly lost in the deep Drama Theatre space in the same way the recent tour of The Play That Goes Wrong did. The set keeps things relatively simple (with a few neat surprises), and much of the visual flare comes from Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s costumes which are a delight, from the subtle differences between the Bingley siblings, to the Titanic-sized hat worn by Lady Catherine. It’s impressive how they manage to be both visually striking and workable with rapid quick changes. My tip — book for the front 10 rows to be really immersed in the show.

It definitely pays to know your Austen, in all its forms, to get the most out of PAPSO, with a lot of the laughs coming from seeing how they’ll try to execute the well-known story-beats. Jane’s horse-ride to the Bingleys’ house and Darcy’s return home are comedy highlights (but you’ll need to be familiar with the BBC adaptation to get the joke).

Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) is like one of those florid, viral croissants you get from Lune — it’s ridiculous and tasty, full of deliberately empty calories to enjoy. You’ll have a great time revisiting the highlights of that book you read in high school while you wait for the next cinematic adaptation. Have no fear of being stuck in some high-brow night at the theatre — this one is firmly set at mid.

Written by Bianca Watkins. World Premiere. Bloodline Productions. The Old Fitz Theatre. 14-24 Jul, 2026.

Faith, friendship and hard drugs combine to produce some unexpected answers in Bianca Watkins’ new play, Holy Hell, that proves itself to be more devout than you might expect.

Catholic university students Cat (Stephanie Somerville) and Mish (Courtney Ally Miller) aren’t exactly the best of friends, but when their mutual bestie Daisy has her drink spiked, Cat suspects one of their uni mates and enlists Mish’s help to get to the bottom of things. But Mish has other plans. She needs a character reference from Cat, and is determined to bond with her over an intense late-night “trip” provided by her dealer — aka her brother. As hallucinogens get ingested and reality bleeds into fantasies, some truths prove to be messier than expected.

There’s something refreshing in Bianca Watkins’ writing that kept subtly defying expectations as Holy Hell progressed. Rather than pushing for the drama, the story veered away from the obvious (and frankly tired) tropes of similar stories, finding itself an honest vein of emotion to explore. As Cat pursues what she believes to be the obvious answer, the truth proves to be maybe more mundane, but more emotionally impactful for her.

As the core duo, Stephanie Somerville and Courtney Ally Miller are a study in opposites. Their performances come to the material from different directions but blend neatly into the kind of odd couple friendship you only really develop in university. Director Dakotah Love keeps the comedy in check, knowing when to amplify for effect without sacrificing genuine emotional investment. The story is helped immensely by the comedic charm of Owen Hasluck as their poor, unwitting friend and the quiet calm of Riley Thomas as their university chaplain.

But it’s the play’s careful, inquiring exploration of faith that I found quite fascinating. Watkins avoids writing an anti-religion polemic and instead finds an element of belief at its core. There is a respectful playfulness to her observations of Catholicism that looks for nuance with a sense of positivity. I have no idea of Watkins’ relationship with religion, but she neatly avoids both juvenile rejection and blind observance.

While it doesn’t deliver on the promise of the title, Holy Hell succeeds in forging its own path through some well-trodden material. With a keen observational eye, Watkins has made an interesting and entertaining play worth staying up late for.

Written by Martin Crimp. Presented by Irregular Programming. The Old Fitz Theatre. 10-25 Jul, 2026.

In an unnerving play that uses the world of real estate as the backdrop to explore the hypocrisy of the landed classes, and the isolating pressure of city life, perhaps the most horrific thing is simply the price of property back in 1988 when the play first premiered. A “four” bed house with a garden on a nice road in London for less than you’d pay for a studio flat in 2026 – I gasped.

Young, successful couple Mike (Arkia Ashraf) and Liz (Talia Benatar) are looking to sell their house but they know how awful and predatory the London real estate market can be, where a buyer can be gazumped at the last minute by a higher bid. They want to do things ethically – list a fair asking price, and accept the first offer to reach it. As their real estate agent, Clair (Olivia Hall-Smith) gently manipulates them into greed, all while appearing to save them from their own naivety. Things are looking rosy when a new buyer, James (Daniel Fletcher), turns up with a large cash offer. Everyone is happy to overlook James’ personality quirks when he’s the one who is about to make them all quite rich.

Inspired by the real life disappearance of London real estate agent Suzy Lamplugh in 1986, playwright Martin Crimp takes aim at the unleashed greed of Thatcherite Britain, and sadly nothing much has changed since. In this layered satire, Crimp’s villain is society as a whole, a toxic Id unmoored from any sense of community. Mike and Liz justify their greed in small steps as they look down on their nanny, Anna (a scathing performance by Jade Fuda), and mock Clair behind her back. When Clair disappears, her entire existence in London is swept away by a city of people only looking after themselves. As tradesman Ashley (Bayley Prendergast) points out, the house itself has flaws that everyone is overlooking. Only James seems to have the measure of the modern world, and his response is terrifying.

Soham Apte’s set creates a sterile box with sliding, translucent doors. It screams featureless, mass-produced neutral – the colour of empty hallways so inoffensive to everyone it basically rejects inspection. On this backdrop, Izzy Morrissey’s lighting brings movement and tone, as well as a harsh modernity in neon strips. Director Harry Reid invites ghosts to inhabit the space – the child we never see, Anna lurking in the next room, a stain you barely notice until you do. Even the makeshift nature of an independent theatre set accentuates the themes of transience and impermanence.

Daniel Fletcher’s off-kilter performance as the polite James strikes just the right note. He exists in another reality, an alien lacking the delusions of the other characters while steeped in their manners. Around him, Olivia Hall-Smith’s Clair tries to manoeuvre and engage with him while deflecting his unwanted intrusions. There is a fear beneath her professional, determined exterior. Meanwhile, Arkia Ashraf and Talia Benatar’s entitled couple are brilliantly clueless to their own corruptions.

After some less-than-thrilling exposures to Crimp’s work, I’ve started to come around to his writing – mainly thanks to the team at Irregular Programming. Or maybe I’m just more comfortable with the darkness of life now, and I find myself on Crimp’s wavelength. Either way, Dealing With Clair is a disturbing but rewarding watch.