In partnership with the Sydney Fringe Festival, ArtsHub is sharing some of the best reviews to come through the festival’s Reviewer Lab. The lab supports emerging arts writers and critics, providing space for new voices and perspectives.
The reviews that have come through so far capture just a flavour of the 2026 festival program: surprising, boundary pushing, and more than a little cheeky.
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Cold War 2.0
Reviewed by Solomiya Sywak
Imagine you’re a background character in Ocean’s 8 – except there’s no George Clooney, the only heist is your phone being confiscated for an hour, and the action unfolds through a chaotic dialogue that ricochets between actor, audience and the society we live in. Flooded in red light and drowned out by heavy-metal karaoke, [Cold War 2.0] is a wild ride that takes you from your seat to the mosh pit.
The theatrical duo Tobias Manderson-Galvin and Aquilla Sorensen, from international performance collective Doppelgängster, are adept at capturing the particular rage of post-anarchist punk. Their performance erupts into discussions about everything from war and disillusionment to personal experience, anecdotes and the uncomfortable facts buried beneath the daily media cycle. It feels deliberately unscripted, like stumbling into a podcast hosted by UFO theorists, where The X-Files has spiralled into pure chaos and paranoia.
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Their ‘anti-theatre’ approach draws loose threads of political satire around the premise of “two losers in a motel room”. They make snow cones in the corner, which I believe are grape-flavoured, while smashing phones, jumping, yelling and screaming with manic excitement.
Across five sections, the performance spirals further into chaos before breaking into metal karaoke, with the microphone passed to audience members and invitations to leap into the mosh pit, thumping across what I can only assume are heritage-listed floors … This is anarchy at its finest: an uneasy, exhilarating punk throwdown that takes aim at authority and the absurdity of contemporary life. The actors take over the entire room, turning the audience from passive spectators into unwilling participants in their chaotic little world.
It is difficult to know where the performance ends and the paranoia begins, and that seems to be precisely the point.
Cold War 2.0 plays until 20 September at Fringe on the Rocks, Sydney. Read Solomiya Sywak’s full review on the Sydney Fringe Feed.
Dial M For Mushrooms
Reviewed by Grace Davidson-Lynch
Is it okay to poke fun at the infamous Erin Patterson murder case, which gripped the nation in 2023 and became an international true crime spectacle? The jury is still out on that one. But the ethics of true crime is not the debate at the centre of George Glass’s comedy cabaret spectacular – instead, they tell the tale of a trio of jurors attempting to understand the mind of a murderer, while losing their own in the process.
A word of warning: this show, starring Nic Conway, Pud Hamilton, and Chris Nenov, is not really about the trial of Erin Patterson, and it will not hold your hand when it comes to the mundane details of that case. If Nagi Maehashi’s New York Times-bestselling cookbook RecipeTin Eats: Dinner and the phrase ‘tan coloured plate’ mean nothing to you, there is a chance a lot of this material will fly over your head. But then again, this mile-a-minute musical bonanza is just as likely to bewilder you anyway, with its endless tangents, absurd prop comedy, and songs about what not to wear during a gastrointestinal emergency.
George Glass’s musical numbers carry the work, but it’s the trio’s wacky brand of humour that makes this a totally unique cabaret experience … While there’s nothing funny about killing your estranged family with poisonous mushrooms, there is something funny about what a crime like this can do to the people caught up in the madness. Whether right or wrong, George Glass has transformed a morbid media spectacle into a morbid and deeply funny comedy spectacle that is well worth a watch.
Dial M for Mushrooms played at Erskineville Town Hall, Sydney from 1 to 5 September. Read Grace Davidson-Lynch’s full review on the Sydney Fringe Feed.
That’s Me In The Corner
Reviewed by Will Winter
A few months ago I was talking to my parents about live music, and they casually dropped that they once saw Chrissy Amphlett in her 80s Divinyls peak perform at Bankstown Sports Club. I was floored. When would you ever see an act so iconic perform at your local these days? Jump back in time 40 years and the Australian music scene looks remarkably different than in the age of the algorithm: legendary bands cutting their teeth at local RSLs and rowdy pubs, an era of raw talent and hedonism which we both mythologise and interrogate.
Gigz (Michael Giglio), the eponymously named muso ringleader at the helm of That’s Me In the Corner, exists as metaphor for this tension, and also as a regular guy with a guitar playing Aussie classics in the back of a pub. Nestled under the Keno screens and a speaker building anticipation for the meat raffle, Gigz is a true everyman, a larrikin, flinging through hits from the Angels, Midnight Oil, and INXS with ease.
Giglio’s show, held at Erskineville Town Hall from 1 to 5 September before landing at the Pottery Lane Performance Space from 24 to 26 September, is a one-man devotion to the craft of live pub performances. It’s also a show in crisis. As Giglio flips between the characters of Gigz and venue manager Dave-O, Gigz discovers that the main reason clubs have live musicians is a legal loophole so they can keep the pokies open for an extra two hours.
How complicit is the singer in indulging gambling culture when gigs are the main way they can make a livelihood? As Gigz himself monologues, ‘if I was a lawyer or carpenter then I’d complain, but I’m a musician’; artists are trained to sit and suffer for their art. That’s the price of passion: what we’re taught is needed to make it in the music world these days.
But as Gigz tries to play through his stress, he unravels. His heroes were assholes who dated minors, his crowds are small, and his music is a balm for the gamblers losing horrendous amounts of money two rooms over. If the show doesn’t provide answers to these issues, it at least opens the door to humanising their complexities … If my generation are unable to experience these greats of Australian live music in their prime, perhaps consuming the art made in their wake is our solution. If that’s so, make sure That’s Me in the Corner ends up in this canon. It’s a rip-roaring time.
That’s Me In The Corner plays the Pottery Lane Performance Space in Lane Cove, Sydney on 24 and 26 September. Read Will Winter’s full review on the Sydney Fringe Feed.
ICHOR
Reviewed by Matthew Donlan
John Fabry’s visceral show takes its name from the ancient Greeks. As a result of drinking ambrosia and nectar, the blood of Greek gods was different to that of mortals; an ethereal golden fluid called Ichor. In Fabry’s show, Ichor is a man, half-naked in the centre of a black-box theatre, paralysed by his need to be accepted. There are no gods here, only flawed mortal men.
Ichor’s story is told via contemporary dance and physical expression. Dressed only in a headscarf, loincloth and body paint, the five-man ensemble collapse, stamp and hurl their bodies for the full hour. Through plumes of smoke on the empty stage, the men trounce around, stalking the space … Their hissing, pointing, laughing and spitting are reminiscent of locker rooms and high schools. But it doesn’t just happen once.
Fabry finds an entrancing beat and a rhythm in this act. In doing so, he presents how this toxic masculinity becomes ingrained in the culture. How it creates a cycle that, like blood, flows instinctively in us … A show not to be missed, Ichor is a brilliant and tragic new work that posits whether the vices of man will forever flow in our veins.
Ichor plays to 12 September at the PACT Centre for Emerging Theatre, Sydney. Read Matthew Donlan’s full review on the Sydney Fringe Feed.
FRÜÜT
Reviewed by Rosana Bouzas
A mock-epic announcement ushers creator, director and producer Exxtra Velvet onstage encased in an enormous banana costume. Co-creator Giselle joins her in a banana skirt that nods to Josephine Baker, and the pair launch into a gleefully fruity double burlesque, introducing the suggestive possibilities of fruit and its endless capacity for sexual innuendo. Here, fruit becomes prop, costume, punchline, and spectacle. The result is a campy cabaret that is often very funny, even if it doesn’t always find fresh variations on its central theme.
Much of FRÜÜT’s charm comes from the performers throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the silliness. For all the striptease, camp exaggeration and overt sexuality, there is something refreshing about the women they present … FRÜÜT is a funny, generous hour of cabaret with an infectious sense of mischief. A little more nuance in what its fruit motif could suggest might make its pleasures even juicier.
FRÜÜT played at the Eternity Playhouse, Sydney from 10 to 12 September. Read Rosana Bouzas’ full review on the Sydney Fringe Feed.
Copa On The Rocks
Reviewed by Will Winter
With a shiny hat, sparkly boots, and thunderous voice, Andrew Bukenya is nothing short of sublime as host for the ambiently jazzy Copa on the Rocks. Housed in the heritage Fringe on the Rocks venue from 2 September to 11 October, Copa is Bukenya’s first long-term residency, a surprising fact considering his ease on stage. Over three hours, the audience indulges in fizzy beverages and the supple sound of Bukenya’s exquisite vocal range, which dips from a booming bass to soft tenor in moments.
Accompanied by a pianist, who on the night I attended was the exceptionally skilled Lucy Birmingham, Bukenya regales tales from his past as international artiste and well-versed background vocalist, meeting stars and stumbling into opportunities to work with his musical heroes. His oeuvre is made up of piano bar staples, Nat King Cole and Chaka Khan songs, which he sings as if transplanted from the original vinyl.
The candle-lit tables and soft yellow lighting give the space a dreamy atmosphere, as if the audience are teleported away from the cold brick of the Rocks and land somewhere more tropical, truer to the heart of the copacabana … It is, overall, a phenomenally fun night at the copa, Copa on the Rocks, in no small part thanks to a generous Bukenya and a giving audience. When you go, be sure to go open-hearted, to sing and to laugh and to take it all in. Being part of the show is half the fun.
Copa on the Rocks continues at Fringe on the Rocks, Sydney until 11 October. Read Will Winter’s full review on the Sydney Fringe Feed.
