★★★★☆
Baylie Carson greets the audience before the show has even begun. They move through the Space Theatre in a blue cropped, sleeveless vest with red trim and black cargo pants. There is a bowl in hand. Inside are small slips of paper, like fortune cookies, waiting for permission.
“You can’t read it until I tell you to,” Carson says.
Carson has the rare quality of seeming like they already know you, and somehow, you know them too.
Handsome(ish), presented as part of Adelaide Cabaret Festival’s Frank Ford Commission, is a world premiere work about labels, bodies, queerness, neurodivergence, family, hunger, language and survival. That sounds heavy. At times, it is. But Carson is too alive a performer to let the night become a lecture. They keep kicking the door open.
The show begins in a spotlight at the back of the stage. Carson sings about diversity being welcome here, then moves past their sister Grace and into the room. The first story is simple and brutal. At 12, Carson was called “handsome.” Not beautiful. Not pretty. Handsome.
The word stuck.
From there, Carson pulls the word apart. They track it through literature, history and etymology. Jane Austen used it. Eleanor Roosevelt was diminished by it. Queen Victoria could receive it as praise. Carson turns “handsome” into a little archaeological site. A word becomes a wound. Then a clue. Then a trapdoor.
They sing a Play School-style song about words being just collections of letters. Language is a system. Systems pretend to make the world clearer. They also decide who gets shoved outside the frame.
That idea gives Handsome(ish) its spine.
Across the hour, Carson threads in video clips of their father, Steven. Not with a “ph”, they joke, but with a PhD. Like Carson, Steven is dyslexic and neurodivergent. It took him 30 years to complete his PhD. His reflections widen the work beyond autobiography.
He talks about study itself. The difficulty of knowing anything, when what we study is shaped by who is studying it. He talks about our need to categorise. Legal systems. Economic systems. Social class. Gender binaries. Boxes built to make sense of reality.
Then Carson shows us what happens when the box does not fit.
The show’s most tender passages are with family. Carson sings for Grace, who is non-verbal and a wheelchair user. But that is not where the description ends. Grace is introduced as an eye-gaze painter. Her work is projected onto the screen. It gives the show one of its clearest acts of love. Recognition.
Carson also jokes about giving people in their life different names. Family members become interchangeable in the language game. Henry becomes Paul. Labels slide around. Names matter. Names also fail.
The darkest section comes when Carson speaks about bulimia. They describe the harm of chasing a body that has been categorised as perfect. They say they almost died. They also reveal this was the first time they had shared the story publicly in performance.
Their parents were seated at tables in the front rows.
That fact changes the room. The usual cabaret armour drops. Carson becomes emotional. The audience holds still. It is not a polished confession. It is fresher than that. Riskier too. No “body” is worth dying for.
There is also desire. Carson sings Nina Simone’s I Put A Spell On You while recounting a one-night stand at Revolver Upstairs in Melbourne. The number is a standout; it has smoke in it. It has bite. It lets Carson’s voice stretch from mischief into command.
They also describe discovering their sexuality while watching a Pride March during lockdown, and corresponding with the oldest living member of Dykes on Bikes. Carson arrives at a beautifully unfixed conclusion. They are attracted to people’s souls.
Their musical theatre credentials sit underneath the show without needing to be paraded. Carson trained at WAAPA. Their credits include Anne Boleyn in SIX the Musical on the West End, Ensemble/Cover Janis in Mean Girls The Musical, and roles in Jagged Little Pill, Bring It On, Lazarus, The Boy From Oz, Dusty and more. They have also been part of the development of Fangirls and Atlantis.
Handsome(ish) is partly about the cost of visibility. Carson speaks about being cast as Anne Boleyn in SIX, and how sections of the press and online world seemed unable to process a body and identity that did not fit the expected box. Instagram trolls and critics pounce.
Their talent is not in question.
The band gives the show muscle and shine. Flick Freeman on bass and Andreanna Massacci on drums are slick throughout. Musical director and composer Shanon D Whitelock helps build a sound world that can move from children’s television pastiche to cabaret confession, rock heat and musical theatre release.
The closing song is the night’s emotional summit. Carson sings of being a “12-year-old school boy in a dress.” Liminal. Divergent. Here, always here.
It is the show’s best thesis. Carson is asking us to stop obsessing over who we are long enough to ask why we are. Who made these categories? What limits have they placed on us? Which ones were never real?
As a first performance, Handsome(ish) still has some settling to do. With so many moving parts, some transitions between songs, stories and video segments are not yet seamless. A few lyrics and narrative shifts feel like they are still finding their final groove.
But that is the right kind of problem for a new cabaret work. The bones are strong, the voice is undeniable. The point of view is alive.
At the end, the audience is invited to read their slips of paper. They contain stories of queer joy. After an hour of systems, shame, bodies, labels and survival, Carson leaves us with something small enough to hold.
Everyone gets to take something home. But the bigger souvenir is the memory of Baylie Carson standing on stage, proudly and imperfectly themselves, refusing to be reduced to anyone else’s vocabulary.
Baylie Carson is Handsome(ish) runs to 12 June at the Space Theatre as part of the 2026 Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Tickets are on sale now at the website.
Website: https://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/whats-on/baylie-carson-is-handsome-ish
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/adelaidecabaret/ and https://www.instagram.com/baylie.carson/
Photo credits: Claudio Raschella (Hero image Yellowbelly)
