“Steal shit back” is a thesis statement and also the title-song battle cry of Artefact (or, Repatriation: The Musical), Lincoln Elliott’s ambitious emo-rock heist musical about colonial theft, cultural identity, self-determination and the punishing business of making new Australian work.
Presented as a work-in-progress showing at Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Artefact arrives as a show within a show within a show. In the Banquet Room, with scripts and stands still visible, it had the charged feeling of something too big for its current container. It is part PhD presentation, part museum break-in, part workshop-room argument, and part kazoo-fuelled middle finger to the British Empire.
A group of young people from British-colonised backgrounds come together to “repatriate” cultural artefacts from the British Museum. Translation: they are going to steal them back.
The crew includes Aboriginal Australian, Indian Australian, African Australian and Polynesian characters. Their target is not only the museum. It’s what the museum represents. It is every system that told them to ask nicely.
Elliott, a Wiradjuri performer, writer, composer, instrumentalist and researcher, has developed Artefact as part of his PhD into identity and self-determinism in contemporary Australian musical theatre. This is academic research with guitars, rage, recorder solos and meta gags.
Three timelines run at once. In the thesis timeline, a student presents the work. In the workshop timeline, creatives try to shape and sell the show. In the heist timeline, the gang goes to London to reclaim what was taken.
That structure could easily collapse under its own cleverness, but it doesn’t. The concert format makes the three timelines harder to separate than they would be in a fully staged, costumed version. There is no choreography, which becomes one of the recurring jokes. Yet the piece remains clear enough to follow.
Lighting helps. Red and yellow lights mark the heist sequences. White light signals the workshop scenes. The thesis frame bookends the night.
Lincoln’s thesis wrestles with a relatable dilemma in this time of poly-crisis: where do you start? How do you respond to a world so full of stolen things? So much injustice. So much extraction. So many reparations still owed.
Revenge, a gunpowder (or chlorine and brake fluid) plot, is not quite right. Creation, not decimation, is the solution.
Balance can only be restored one new artefact at a time. One story at a time. One cultural work at a time. Continuing to exist is resistance. Telling your own story, in your own way, is self-determination. Refusing to assimilate.
Artefact is furious, but it is not blunt. It understands how anger gets policed. Oppressed people are often told they may protest, but only peacefully. Only politely. Only in ways that do not inconvenience the oppressive system.
The choice of emo and rap is not just a method for chasing a younger demographic. These are genres often dismissed as too angry, too loud or too much. Artefact proudly dons the eye makeup and black skinny jeans and sits down in Emo Park. The emotive rock and rap merge like Linkin Park.
Joe Kalou delivers the night’s biggest late-show explosion. His rap lands like both a mic drop and a bomb drop. His earlier rap work with Elliott and Manali Datar is another highlight.
Rachel Crossan, as Nelly, brings an impish grin and gleeful chaos to the room. Elliott has described the character as a “horny chaos goblin,” and Crossan honours that brief with relish. Her Night at the Museum number is one of the show’s most immediate crowd-pleasers.
Natalie Abbott brings warmth and emotional focus as Vinny. Her No Turning Back is a vocal masterclass. Ava Madon brings sharp intelligence to Matty, the activist turned lawyer.
Adam Spain-Mostina has a field day with Vicky, the show’s high-camp Queen Victoria. This is not a polite royal ghost. It is part Emperor Palpatine, part Herod from Jesus Christ Superstar, part panto villain with imperial rot in the bloodstream.
Victoria Falconer sits stage left as narrator, giving the sprawling world a steady outside eye. Director Manali Datar and musical director Andy Freeborn help hold the chaos together.
Elliott has assembled performers who understand both the joke and the wound underneath it.
The show is full of caper references. Ocean’s Eleven hangs over the heist dynamics. MacGuffins get a nod. There is Benny Hill-style British silliness. Rule, Britannia! appears via kazoos. A recorder solo somehow becomes part of the anti-colonial arsenal.
Artefact can have you mulling over constitutional law dictums, then giggling at choruses of kazoos.
This blending of high and low culture speaks to the show’s larger argument about culture itself. Cultures blend, borrow, evolve and remix. The problem is not exchange, the problem is theft, power and who gets to profit from what was taken.
Artefact ends with a call to action for the development of new Australian musicals. This is a show about repatriation, but it is also an example of the thing it argues for: new stories, made here, by artists with something urgent to say.
As a concert work-in-progress, Artefact is not yet in its final form. The fully staged version will likely make the timelines clearer. Costumes, choreography and physical comedy should sharpen the heist world. Some transitions will also benefit from the extra definition that staging can provide.
But the bones are strong. Captain Cook’s femur strong. A full staging will only sharpen Elliott’s wit, deepen the chaos and give this strange, furious, funny new Australian musical the body it deserves.
Artefact (or, Repatriation: The Musical) ran for one night only in the Banquet Room on 11 June as part of the 2026 Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Tickets are on sale for all Cabaret Festival shows now at the website.
Website: https://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/whats-on/lincoln-elliott-artefact-or-repatriation-the-musical
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/artefact.musical/ and https://www.instagram.com/adelaidecabaret/
Hero image: Rebecca Elliott
