Author: Benjamin Webb

★★★½ How long is a life? Roughly three billion seconds, give or take. Sitting inside the intimate traverse stage of KXT Kings Cross Theatre, 3 Billion Seconds feels like a pressure cooker of love, panic and moral calculus. This play demands that you account for your existence. Fundamentally, it asks:…

★★★★½ What does it cost to be understood? That’s the driving question behind Outhouse Theatre Co’s production of English, presented with Seymour Centre in Sydney. And as is often the case in a play about learning language, it is the silences, the gaps between what is known and unknown, that speak…

On the closing night of The Last Train to Madeline at The Popsy Theatre, presented by Australian Theatre for Young People, the room seemed to echo back to an earlier age. Like that of a long summer afternoon that you didn’t realise would define a particular period of your life. Written by…

★★★☆☆ We know the story. We know the knife is coming. Yet the thrill of Shakespeare’s great political tragedy, Julius Caesar, lies not in the assassination of Caesar himself, but what follows. Bell Shakespeare’s production asks the question: Can one commit murder and retain any moral standing? Is there any…

★★★★☆ Fingerless Theatre’s production of As You Like It at Flightpath Theatre embraces a lively sense of escape. With picnic blankets, live music and a warm, nostalgic glow, this production invites its audience to take a breath, sit under the metaphorical sunshine and enjoy one of Shakespeare’s most joyful comedies.…

★★★★☆ A Mirror delivers that special kind of silence that falls in a theatre when an audience realises it has been complicit. We thought we were watching a wedding. We were not. We thought we were safe observers. We were not. The stage doesn’t reflect society. It reflects the very theatre-going…

Ever wanted to kill someone? Not in a real way, perhaps. But in that dark, late night, half-joke way you confess only to your closest friend. Last night at the Old Fitz Theatre, Tonsils + Tweezers began with that very question hanging in the air. The audience was greeted by one of…

Written by Jennifer Lunn, ES & FLO premiered in the UK before finding a new life in Australia, notably with Mi Todo Productions at the Old Fitz Theatre in Sydney. The play places older women at its centre, exploring sexuality, friendship and autonomy with honesty. The story follows Es and Flo, two…

I walked into Wharf 1 Theatre not knowing Purpose had arrived at Sydney Theatre Company with a cloud of awards; Tony Award, Pulitzer Prize, Drama Critics’ Circle. Even if I had, nothing could have prepared me for how alive the Jasper family felt. Three hours later, I left feeling shaken and amused…

Who is Chrissy Amphlett? No, really, who the f**k is Chrissy Amphlett? After seeing Amplified at Belvoir St Theatre, I’m beginning to get an idea. Chrissy Amphlett was one of those artists who didn’t just perform her songs but became them. The opening night crowd of people my Dad’s age crackled with…

Co-written by Brendan Cowell, Ewen Leslie, and Toby Schmitz, Hamlet Camp premiered in 2025 and draws on each performer’s long and storied relationship with Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy. All three actors have played Hamlet in major productions, and the show emerges as a kind of post-Hamlet reckoning – part memoir, part poetry…

Sport for Jove’s The Comedy of Errors begins not with slapstick, but with a plea for empathy. A lone figure speaks Shakespeare’s “strangers’ case” into the open air, and suddenly this familiar comedy is bookended by an emotional family drama.  Believed to be Shakespeare’s earliest comedy, The Comedy of Errors was first performed in…

The strangest thing about thrillers is the way they turn us into amateur detectives the moment the lights go down. In Ensemble Theatre’s Dial M For Murder, I found myself leaning forward before a single word was spoken, bracing for the inevitable twist I knew was coming, just not when…

There are some opening nights where you feel you are watching a slice of the city’s theatre history forming in real time. Sitting at KXT for Montague Basement’s The Seagull, I had that rare feeling. Maybe it was the sight of 120 props arranged with chaotic precision. Maybe it was the…

Colin Friels’ King Lear stepped onto the bare square stage, chalk in hand, and drew a perfect circle at its centre. It was a simple gesture, but it set the tone for the play: a world drawn in plain sight, full of rules we recognise but struggle to obey. That…

Shakespeare wrote Romeo & Juliet in the mid-1590s. It has been staged in almost every style imaginable: corseted Victorians, gritty street gangs, full-tilt modern realism, even futuristic neon worlds. Bell Shakespeare first performed the play in 1992 during its founding year, establishing the company’s commitment to rigorous, actor-focused interpretations of Shakespeare’s most…

So Young starts with the strange shock of seeing old friends reunite after a tough year. It then drops you straight into the tension of a man trying to rebuild a life that has broken in too many places.  The play arrives in Sydney at the Old Fitz Theatre with an…

Four Minutes Twelve Seconds, a co-production between Crying Chair Theatre and Secret House at Flight Path Theatre, is wrought with tension. From the opening moments when a family’s calm life is shattered after a revealing online video surfaces, the play knows exactly how to twist that knot in your stomach and…

Before last night, I didn’t know Shirley Valentine. It has a legacy and a reputation that it made a whole generation of middle-aged women (and men) feel seen. It validated their experiences and frustrations with their lives and made them want to change. Now I understand. About halfway through the show,…

Everyone remembers their first job, right? Well, at the tender age of 16, I asked my parents to get my first job. They replied, “School IS your job.” Eventually, they suggested I join Woollies or Coles, instead of a fast food chain like everyone else. And now I can see…

Since the debut of The Laramie Project 25 years ago, it is still striking how the darkest tragedy can bring forth the most incredible art. The verbatim words of the real people of Laramie travel through time to remind us that hate has consequences and empathy has weight.  Premiering in 2000 in…

On opening night at The Greek Theatre, Luminar Theatre Company’s debut production of Samson brought a packed house into a world both familiar and startling, balancing the brutality of grief and loyalty with the lightness of wit and friendship. As I drove home, I was left thinking less about theatre as performance…

Full disclosure: I loved this show! From being serenaded by the trio of performers dancing as the audience slips by to take their seats, to the high-octane, explosive finale, Mummy, I’m Scared! doesn’t invite you into its world, it drags you, keeling over with laughter, into the séance circle. You may not…

On opening night of Trent Dalton’s Love Stories at Riverside Theatres Parramatta, as the theatre doors opened and people trickled in, we were met with a shocking sight. Ourselves on stage. Not literally on the floorboards of the stage, but mirrored through the use of a camera and live-feed projecting our every…