It was high drama indeed when the curtain rose at Sydney’s gorgeously appointed new burlesque cabaret and theatre space Two80, for the Australian premiere of Matthew Gasda’s Doomers, playing as part of the 2025 Sydney Fringe.
Tucked as we were deep inside one of the grungier pockets of Surry Hills and beset by the malign technical gremlins which attend all media previews, this Doomers looked like it would be delivering on its title in spades.
Practically foaming at the mouth, the sweet bile of schadenfreude rising in my gullet, the salty taste of actor’s tears on my tongue, this impartial annalist (I am a writer of annals) surveyed the blood red cabaret ambience and whittled the tip of his trusty red pencil, ‘The Castigator.’
Alas, that didn’t pan out. Let me rewind. It’s Monday night. It’s also 2023.
The New York-based Journalist and playwright Matthew Gasda has had a gutful of Elon, AI and the end of the world. It’s a far more innocent time. Twitter is still Twitter. The hunt for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in full swing. No one has any idea what D.O.G.E stands for. That’s a few years away.
And then, before you could punch the idea into ChatGPT, out of Gasda bursts a very punchy two-act excoriation of greed, human stupidity and the hubris that has marked every corporate manoeuvre since Big Tech clocked to the awesome promises of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Two years and another Trump Presidency later, we’re quaffing cocktails and wondering when the premiere will premiere.
The Sydney Dramaturgical Company are splitting performances between the burlesque fun of the Two80 and the spacious Tom Mann Theatre in the semi-grunge of downtown Surry Hills, opposite the Alfred Park at Central. It’s not going to fit. That’s what I’m thinking as the curtain finally rises and the San Francisco condo of one of the world’s richest men is condensed into a bit of a squish.
And just as the guys find a rhythm, the audio starts popping out. This is unfortunate – not only because the cast didn’t really need to be mic’d up in such an intimate setting, but Gasda unpacks an enormous amount into what is essentially two one-act plays. Once the trail is lost, it’s hard to pick up again.
Still, in what we hope is the true spirit of the age, the entire cast remained on point, in character, with nary a Californian accent wavering. Nor a diabolical personal insult going missing.
The electric pace of the play almost demands scope and space, and may be worth taking in at the Tom Mann. However, that’s not to take anything away from Two80 as a wonderful addition to Sydney’s ever-improving handful of truly theatrical venues.
And while the sustained panic of the second act overshadows the first in its violent energy, a really sympathetic cast deliver a universal pathos and lend some much-needed humanity (or human frailty) to a dysfunctional corporate family of Type-A personalities.
Directed with vigour and some occasional venom by Victoria Lenehan, the action is quick and cunningly wrought, with each concurrent act a mirror of the other. The first unfolds inside the San Francisco apartment of the Sam Altman-esque protagonist Seth as he gathers his remaining loyalists and prepares to go to the mattresses against his own company.
Meanwhile, as news of the split spreads across the country (aka Act Two), the company’s Board is frantically going supernova in an ill-conceived and drug-addled emergency Board meeting.
It’s an actor’s play for sure. The dialogue is sharp, dry and cruel, alternately snarky-savvy and savvy-snarky. Appalling people, yes. But the dedicated cast ensure they’re all appalling in their own, especially awful way. Notable bastards abound.
The warmth of Leilani Faasisila’s Mei is a front. Sam Goldrick’s ex-NSA director Harriet is nearly lovely, but mostly just a terrible mercenary. Apollo Zephyr’s car crash of a tweaked-out disruptor Eli offers moments of levity, but he’s essentially a dick. Ben Blacker’s Seth is a pure narcissist.
Then there’s Richie Clarke’s gutter-mouthed chain smoker Charlie. Not the show’s most sympathetic tech executive. But there is something just so achingly sad in his isolation. If ever there was a slow-motion cardiac arrest in one act, this is it.
The personality types who populate Gasda’s vision of where human rubber is hitting the AI road are queasily familiar to most of us in 2025. And they all seem to revel in crisis. What’s perhaps most surprising about Doomers is how much the play has aged in only two years.
Addled by an appalling few years of war, Trump, Putin, Elon and Everything, the modern (2025) Aussie audience will find it almost impossible to recall an America before D.O.G.E. and an Elon who wasn’t coming across as a complete dick.
With creatives of all stripes learning how to live under AI’s Damoclean hot poker, the threat of mean tech has tapped into a rich vein of artistic animus. We’re not only watching the end of the world, we’ve been living it too.
Still, a willing cast in a confined space do their best to unearth the worst of people in the face of looming wealth beyond imagination and/or complete annihilation. The greed and cowardice. The delusions of grandeur. The Messianic mania. The religious fervour and the destruction of faith. And cocktails too. You could ask for more, but the lesson here is not to.
Doomers is presented by Sydney Dramaturgical Company. It runs at Two80* as part of the 2025 Sydney Fringe Festival. 280 Cleveland Street Surry Hills NSW 2010.
Tickets: https://sydneyfringe.com/events/doomers-by-matthew-gasda/
Website: https://www.sydneydramaturgical.com/doomers
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/sydneydramaturgical/
Images supplied.
*Between the matinee and evening shows on Sunday 7 September, held at Tom Mann Theatre, join a panel of tech insiders, strategists, and academics as they unpack how AI is reshaping Australia’s creative industries. From screen to stage, design to discourse. Free with your matinee ticket.
