Mrs Lovett’s Little Devil and the Eighteen Lives

This email is late! So, let's pretend it's Sunday morning right now and I finished this diary about the four shows I saw on Saturday by the time I said I would. Ok? Great. Thanks. Love you x

Saturday began with a lazy sleep in, breakfast on the couch, and a tram ride to St Kilda. Theatre Works' Explosives Factory may be hard-to-find and overprogrammed—but at least it's easy for me to get to (I love you, No. 67 Tram).

I was there to catch Eighteen Lives (祖宗十八代), a comedy about three strangers who keep meeting in different lives against the unfolding backdrop of Chinese history. This is from the same company who did The Ship at Melbourne Fringe last year which—despite a lot of really positive reviews of that production—I didn't love. I thought the tone and pacing was pretty inconsistent, and the AV which was praised by many felt incidental to the show's dramatic core. Nevertheless, always one to give a second chance, I found myself sitting in the back row of Explosives Factory—complimentary peach lolly in hand—waiting for the lights to dim.

And then plot twist, they didn't dim. Eighteen is wrapped up in a meta narrative which befuddled me before wrapping the show up into a fuzzy warm hug right at the end. The first five minutes are about the actors who are doing the show, before some magical force pushes the story back to the 1911 right before the fall of the Qing dynasty. From this point on almost all of the show is performed in Mandarin so I was caught flicking between the open captions and the action but that really wasn't an issue. This might have been the best execution of open captioning I've seen in an indie theatre show to be honest!

So the play follows these three people who kind of kick off the 1911 revolution. One of them sacrifices their life to save the other two, at which point the play rewinds even more to get into the debt these three folks keep owing each other. The story goes deeper and deeper into Chinese history and their multiple lives before a really satisfying reveal of the original bond that’s brought them together in these eighteen lives.

Like all theatre, I reckon it could've probably been 10 to 20 minutes shorter—but the structure and payoff was really satisfying, even if I didn't get many of the language specific jokes. The story here about the debt we owe to each other is one I really liked, and the production design and direction was pretty tight. TL;DR I liked it.

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Then I was off to the tram again, heading up St Kilda Road to Flinders St where I caught a train to Kensington for a show made by a friend of mine in her apartment. This wasn't strictly part of Comedy Fest, nor was it funny, but in the spirit of diarising my day I figure I'll tell you about it.

My friend Martha is doing a series of plays in her apartment, one a month for the entire year. I saw the first one which was about autism and also computer chips and I really loved it. Apparently the second one was a flop but that's fine because I missed it! And then on Saturday I managed to catch the third one, a collaboration with another friend, Ori.

I curse the energy of these two because from what I can see there was no official title for the show, just assorted Instagram posts covered with handwritten directions to PayID for tickets and email for the address. Very cool, but very illegible to those trying to document culture (a deliberate choice from Martha, I'm sure).

ANYWHO! The show was loosely about film and so there was popcorn and we heard a monologue from Ori about submitting audition reels and the stress of having to become a filmmaker to be able to audition and also what happens if StarNow gets hacked and your likeness is cloned with AI? Very existential and very good and also I love watching Ori monologue. Then the pair of them did this WONDERFUL scene where they were both wearing VR headsets chatting in the metaverse. Ori was a little bunny rabbit (which we couldn't see, because we weren't in the metaverse) and Martha was like a big Japanese robot. Ideas about how we inhabit digital space here, but also I just enjoyed their chemistry. It felt the most like A Show ™ that I've seen from Martha's apartment series and I quite liked that. Maybe I'm a stickler for convention. Who knows. Then there was a scene where an audience volunteer had to record a video which will be uploaded to the internet forever which was pretty fun but felt a bit loose. And then we had a lovely minestrone soup!!!

I dashed off pretty quickly to catch TWO more shows, but this was just a fun break in a busy comedy festival day. I love how Martha is making theatre outside of the hustle, it’s wonderfully low stakes and playful. I also really love (and am terrified of) the fact that I knew nobody who went to see Martha's show. It is good to be in rooms with strangers—I think—but it is pretty nerve-wracking. I think I made some new friends though so that's cool.

One tram ride and one poo in a luxury hotel bathroom later and I was ready to catch Elliot Wood's Mrs Lovett’s Famous Meat Pies Grand Reopening Extravaganza, which is in fact exactly what it says on the tin! Before I even talk about the show (which was fun) can we acknowledge how excellent the blurb is:

Nearly 200 years after the events of Sweeney Todd, after inexplicably surviving being thrown into a furnace, Nellie Lovett has fled Victorian England for the second most Victorian place in the world – Victoria. Tonight is the grand reopening of Mrs Lovett’s famous pie shop, now at the Queen Victoria Markets due to popular demand – and you’re invited! Jello shots on entry!

Like hello? I'm obsessed. I was literally having a conversation at Martha's about how too many artists write really bad blurbs which don't explain what a show actually is, so it was a delight to read the above and know exactly what I was in for.

I should mentioned that I've never watched any Sondheim (except for Into the Woods and Company) so I actually have no clue what happens in Sweeney Todd except for the broad strokes: pies, cannibalism, haircuts, and—based on context clues in Wood's show— Sweeney's wife gets thrown into a furnace (rip).

And despite my naïveté, Wood has managed to craft a titillating hour of pie puns and polemic, using Lovett's cannibalistic urges to both take down the political elite ruining our country (the concept of a 'spineless Albanese pie' disgusts me, and not just because of my vegetarianism) but also fire criticism at the actions of the Lord Mayor of Melbourne who's been busy setting up his own police force to 'prevent crime' (when he's not trying to sell off arts infrastructure of course).

But I digress, the show is more than its politics. Wood gives every attendee raffle tickets and throughout the show invites us up by number for little pie-making mini games which are as icky as it is fun. Very Nickelodeon slime, you know? Wood is a quippy host too, churning out banter which I loved, although by the end the pattern of 'replace common word with vaguely sexual word' was a little repetitive. Nevertheless, a very satiating hour of the cultural relevancy that mainstage theatre dreams of.

Interestingly this is the second show I've seen in the Motley Spielhaus which includes cannibalism, buckets of fake blood, tarp on the floor, and a stainless steel kitchen bench:

Right after the applause ended (by this point in the night I had met up with Georgie) we bolted around the corner to The Motley Wherehaus to catch Little Devil and the War Machine and managed to slip in, only missing out on the first minute of the show.

This was one of my recommendations for the festival, and I'm happy to say that it delivered.

Little Devil is a work of Commedia Dell'arte which (if my memory from high school drama serves me) is a historical comedy style from Italy based around stock characters. You've got Arlecchino who's like a demon twink, Il Capitano who's a hyper-mask himbo, perma-villain-edit recipient Brighella, and the know-it-all Dottore.

This was my very first experience watching Commedia and I gotta say, I just adored it. The physicality of every character was top-notch, the mime was sublime, and the world was so seductive. It's set in central Italy in 1502 or 1503, right when Leonardo da Vinci (of Da Vinki?! fame) and his twink sidekick Salaì were working for a dictator military leader named Cesare Borgia who was busy building an empire.

This historical moment serves as an effective parallel for the unchecked militarism we're seeing unfold in 2026, and we get to witness Da Vinci grapple with the actual output of his scientific research: bloodshed. It's really f*cking resonant imho, making me think about Pine Gap and our own complicity in what's going on in Iran & Gaza, the way Palantir pretends to be a 'tech company' rather than a weapons manufacturer, and the way weapons & fossil fuels research embeds itself into higher education spaces. The horrors of the world are unleashed in the name of innovation, and so really, is any of it worth it? Why do progress for the sake of progress?

This all sounds pretty heavy but I swear it's light and fun. There's horniness and great slapstick and a really satisfying story performed by an incredibly united ensemble. Georgie said afterwards that she kept forgetting that half of it was mimed because it was just that slick, and she's so right, it's a treasure to witness.

My big thought coming out of the show was that it was great, really phenomenal, but not a 'Melbourne International Comedy Festival' show. Like I recommend you see it! But I wouldn't recommend you see it if you're looking to see a quintessential MICF show, you know what I mean? Vibe-wise it felt like this show belonged in the midst of Melbourne Fringe where it would be adored and worshipped for being a weird political manifesto about the nature of power and state violence delivered through Commedia.

Basically, go see it. It’s one of the most interesting things happening at MICF this year I reckon, but treat it like you're seeing a play which will make you smirk and snort, rather than an hour of comedy which'll leave you in stitches. It's commedia dell'arte with bite—and you gotta see it.

That about sums up my weekend at MICF. I'm catching shows every night this week and I'm very excited and can’t wait to tell you about it all. What have you been seeing and loving? Let’s compare notes x