Deal With It! | Hanson Creative

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Halfway between Rosemary’s Baby and a screwball comedy, Deal With It! is an odd play. Following couple Alix and Max as they investigate roommate Bridget’s comings and goings, the play strikes a horror-comedy tone that, while a welcome change of pace from Magandjin’s usual dramatic fare, left me wanting more.

I’m a horror nerd - it’s my favourite genre by a country mile, so a play about investigating your roommate’s deal with the devil would normally be deeply up my alley. Unfortunately, Deal With It! has some load-bearing problems that kept it from working for me. A first time effort from co-writers Aimee Sheather and Aarya Dath, I felt there were a few growing pains - the play lags, with many scenes needlessly reiterating information or beats that we had already seen, and the conflicting tones often overlap in a way that felt inauthentic to the characters we had been presented.

While I found the writing largely hit-or-miss, there were some very strong comedic moments made even stronger by the performers - of particular note, Caleb Hockings’ Zizi and Gianni-Mia Attrill-Dowling’s Bridget. The pair share multiple scenes throughout the show’s runtime, and the dynamic between Hockings’ charming devil and Attrill-Dowling’s neuroticism worked well for me. As always with PIP Theatre shows, I cannot commend the tech team enough - eerie soundscapes and evocative lighting helped to keep Deal With It! feeling narratively cohesive and consistent through its fluctuations between horror and comedy. 

In acknowledging my main issue with Deal With It!, discussion of spoilers is required - if this is a dealbreaker for you, beware. On a similar note, know that the following includes direct discussion of sexual assault.

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It is revealed by the midpoint that Bridget’s deal with the devil involved the promise of her firstborn in exchange for a more comfortable economic position - a somewhat confusing deal to have made narratively, considering she continues living in a shitty apartment with a roommate she barely knows, but this is not where my issue lies. My issue is that, in revealing that the men who constantly follow her are agents of the devil sent to forcibly impregnate her, Deal With It! invokes an incredibly serious real-life issue without the dramatic substance to back it up. Bridget is a victim of the constant threat of sexual violence - by the end of the play, we learn that Zizi (AKA Beelzebub) has sent at least thirteen men after her in an attempt to get his end of the bargain. While I don’t take issue with the depiction of sexual violence in theatre (it is art, after all), I do take issue when it is depicted clumsily and without consideration. One of the better scenes of the play, in which Bridget divulges to Alix that she is being stalked, is undercut almost immediately when (on finding their apartment covered in blood and broken glass) Alix and Max do not suspect said stalker, and rather immediately put on a Benoit Blanc impression to accuse Bridget of murder. Bridget’s psychotic break and subsequent murder of Alix at the end of the play, instigated by the death of her boyfriend, is treated as a full-on villain moment, with cheers in the crowd when Max kills Bridget in an act of revenge. I’m not sure if the writers were going for a Jennifer’s Body style tone, or were aiming for straight-up bleak, but for me it felt at best uncomfortable and at worst offensive.

Additionally, sexual violence was not listed amongst the slew of content warnings given at the beginning of the play - while I understand this is a first endeavour for many involved, this is a serious failure to enact the safeguards the creatives seemed to have been pursuing. I have firsthand experience with sexual violence, and while I did not find the work to be triggering personally, I would not be surprised if other audience members did, especially given the several attempted rapes depicted throughout the play’s runtime.

All in all, I found Deal With It! to be a bit too messy for me to get as much out of it as I wanted - any good will I had toward it was, unfortunately, negated by the works poor handling of sexual assault as a topic. This being said, I hope that Sheather & Dath continue to write and further develop their artistic voices - horror is a much needed presence on local stages, and I would like to see more of it. 

Deal With It! played at PIP Theatre from 27 January to 7 February 2026.