A Few Good Men | Queensland Theatre Company
A Few Good Men is the must see show of the year—or possibly the Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) production of the decade. It is a show for our time, and a play that goes to the heart of what it means to be honourable and courageous. Director Daniel Evans has created a show that is both epic and intimate, and which emphasises the light and shade of the story. It gets a 6-star, 10 out of 10 rating from me. Go if you can find a ticket for this show!
HEAT | Zen Zen Zo
Heat takes place in the sweetly nostalgic backyard of Morningside Scout Hall, a classic school-yard style building with layered timber and a tall roof. The addition of a clothesline, a ring of eucalypts, a sunset and a passing trainline results in a richly sensory experience that charms the early show audience.
Horse Play | Nathaniel Crossinggum & Lunch Friend
Following punter Georgie as she is dragged into activist Pony’s impending bomb plot targeting the Melbourne Cup, Horse Play is an exploration of the intersection between protest, obligation, and fear, unpacking this venn diagram so thoroughly that by the end, you’ll be wondering why you’re not doing more.
Tell Me Something | Davidson Gluyas Productions
Tell Me Something is a great piece of theatre, and I hope that its inclusion in the 2025 Melt Festival attracts queer and wider audiences. Yes, the protagonists are queer, and yes there are some strong sexual references and deep themes. But each of these themes have a universality that is not limited to sexual orientation or identity. Tell Me Something is a reminder to all of us to be truthful with ourselves, and with our closest friends.
Make Me Better Ma | Jazz Zhao
Throughout her reading, Zhao’s vulnerability was palpable, permeating the theatre space with its rawness and authenticity and yet still encouraging laughter from the audience.
Whitefella Yella Tree | La Boite Theatre
Whitefella Yella Tree is the Romeo & Juliet of our times. The La Boite debut of award-winning Palawa playwright Dylan Van Den Berg deserves a sold-out close to its short run. It is a clever, and sometimes funny, piece of writing that addresses big issues through a sensitively told story.
Malacañang Made Us | Queensland Theatre Company
Malacañang Made Us is a must-see show: great writing, clever design, and a strong cast. And I also love the way in which this show normalises and integrates queer identities and culture. Malacañang Made Us is a great choice for the Queensland Theatre Company program, and is certain to be on many top three lists from the 2025 Melt Festival. Go and see it if you can.
Terms and Conditions Apply | Play on Stage
The play is witty, funny and has some great dance moves. Unsurprisingly, as Day, Dombay and Hosie are each credited as co-creators and writers, the artists are well-cast and portray each of their characters as believable twenty-something housemates.
The 39 Steps | Woodward Productions & Neil Gooding Productions
Ian Stenlake is a great choice for the role of our unsuspecting hero, Richard Hannay. Lisa McCune is a talented actor: charming as the foreign spy, highly amusing as the farmer’s wife, and fabulous as Hannay’s love interest. Casting The Umbilical Brothers is a great idea; the duo is an experienced comedy partnership, which means that Collins and Dundas are very capable of improvising and working hard to see if they can each ‘corpse’ their fellow artists.
Our Top 10 Picks for Melt Festival 2025
If you’re already suffering from Brisbane Festival withdrawal symptoms, don’t worry: Brisbane’s Melt Festival is just around the corner (22 October-9 November)—and probably in many corners near you.
The Natural Horse | Salad Days Collective
The Natural Horse is a deeply strange play, in more ways than one. A dark comedy about an ex-Soviet family and their struggles with the American dream, it's a work with a lot of lofty concepts and low-brow comedy, much of which is achieved with a scrappy heart that I appreciated.
A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen (or How to Make the Perfect One-Pot Chicken Curry) | Joshua Hinton
A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen made for heartwarming theatre. Its soulful unfolding is a testimony to the transformative power of stories, especially the ones we relish and rely on for the sustenance of our selfhood.
The Platypus | Soft Tread Enterprises
A black comedy tackling the complexities of family, relationships, housing, and child rearing, The Platypus utilises its genre-bending format to unpack our cultural biases and ask uncomfortable questions.
Congratulations, Get Rich! | La Boite Theatre
‘Congratulations, Get Rich” reminded me of the value in hearing stories that come from a place of deep cultural specificity — stories that, regardless of your background, tap into shared experiences of love, loss, and connection. It’s rare to see something so intimate and culturally specific on stage, yet still feel so universal — and for me, that’s what made it clear how important it is to keep sharing diverse stories in theatre.
Milestone | William Yang
Yang was poised in his delivery and sparkling with wit. If he comes this way again, I will tell anyone who loves art, history, the celebration and exploration of queerness and Australiana to go see Milestone or its other iterations. This show is both art and heritage preservation, and a joy to watch.
Back to Bilo | Belloo Creative
Back to Bilo’s painstaking efforts in amplifying the refugee story with so much attention to detail are praiseworthy. It is a necessary Australian story. One that needs to traverse terrains and timelines across the continent to the enduring hum of humanity.
Our hot pics for BrisFest 2025
BrisFest returns to town this year from 5 to 27 September for Artistic Director Louise Bezzina’s sixth and final festival. With so much arty goodness on offer, it can be hard to know where to start, so the writers of NEHIB have dived into the program and have come up with a list of what you simply must see at BrisFest this year.
DragSpeare | Jo Loth & Anne Pensalfini
This show challenges your expectations from the very beginning. It was set in a theatre pretending to be an RSL pretending to be the theatre again. The cast plays men, playing women. There were enemies playing lovers and lovers playing enemies and frames within frames within frames … DragSpeare is going to challenge you and give exactly what you need all in one big ball of smouldering pouts, puns, gender fuckery and song.
Yoga Play | La Boite Theatre
In this world of consumerism gone mad, Yoga Play highlights the (laugh out loud) paradox of the practice of yoga between the West (California) and the East (India) using satire to bridge the gap between ludicrous and rational.
AI May - Embodi Theatre
AI May is a play that explores grief, and the ways in which we process it, or the ways in which we do not. It is a slice of tomorrow-styled science fiction, or as it totes itself, futuristic realism, wherein potential technologies of artificial technology have become commonplace in the not-too-distant future, replacing social services and healthcare and other daily essentials.