In June 2015, when Connor Morel was 17 years old and ‘full of testosterone and lacking dopamine’, he met his biological father for the first time. In story and song, ably supported by a three piece band, Morel tells the story of that meeting – and much more besides – in his new show Good Man at this year’s Adelaide Fringe.
The story takes place in Geelong, at a sticky-carpeted pub called The Townie, where Connor’s first band are launching their new CD. Morel spares us from Durrie Blaster and other musical juvenilia of the period; instead, the self-described ‘music theatre kid with a guitar’ performs a series of gently melodic rock songs as he relives the first, faltering footsteps that led to him becoming the man he is today.
At its core, Good Man is a rock-cabaret exploration and rejection of toxic masculinity, informed by a 27 year old’s perspective of his awkward teenaged years. Morel sings about idolising the wrong sort of man – ‘a rock god superstar’ – as his teenaged self searches for appropriate male role models, and balances out moments of introspection and self-recrimination with levity and charm.
Good Man: building tension to an emotional payoff
At regular intervals, Morel reminds us of the fateful meeting to come – ‘55 minutes ‘til I meet my father for the first time … 45 minutes ‘til I meet my father for the first time … 30 minutes …’. He successfully builds tension by intercutting one clock ticking down with another: the moment his younger self’s band begin to play.
Morel’s actual band, featuring Ben Cook on bass, drummer Jake Pickering and Xena Sheedy on guitar, acquit themselves well; they also share supporting character roles between them. One minute Pickering is uttering the sound mixer’s dialogue, the next minute the character is played by Sheedy; the end result is a polyphonic tapestry of words and sounds.
One such character is Morel’s single mum; another is her ex-boyfriend, Morel’s former stepdad, a local cop. His story, explored through song, compellingly demonstrates the emotional mute button such men use to distance themselves from their feelings, and is one of the highlights of Good Man.
The production’s emotional payoff, when it comes, is both moving and surprising.
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Better Man is warm, engaging and relatable; it is let down by a significant structural flaw. One of the fundamental rules of storytelling is ‘show, don’t tell’; frustratingly, Morel keeps telling us what his 17-year-old self should have done in key situations – his failure to respond to a homophobic slur by the sleazy venue owner or a respected peer’s misogyny – instead of showing us. The story, and the songs, lose impact as a consequence.
Morel is a strong performer, successfully conveying his younger self’s brashness and arrogance as well as the tension he feels as the pivotal parental meeting draws near. Sadly, his evident sincerity – the result of actively choosing to take a new path in life, as an early song establishes – is undercut by the production’s inherent flaws. His sincerity feels slightly performative as a result, and Good Man is the poorer for it.
Good Man plays The Hetzel Room at The Courtyard of Curiosities at the State Library until 1 March as part of Adelaide Fringe 2026.
Richard Watts visited Adelaide as a guest of Adelaide Fringe.
Also on ArtsHub: ‘All voices should be heard’, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker tells Adelaide Festival crowd
‘All voices are important. All voices should be heard,’ Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker told the 10,000-strong opening night Adelaide Festival crowd on Friday night (27 February).
Cocker was reading from a hand-held note during an interlude in the band’s penultimate song, the crowd-pleasing anthem, Common People. Minutes earlier, he had introduced the song by saying it was, ‘inspired by a conversation with someone I disagreed with’.
It’s the closest Cocker – Jarvis to his fans – came to rebuking the former Adelaide Festival Board over their censorship of Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah. The Board’s actions led to the cancellation of Adelaide Writers Week last month…
