Bedtime Stories for Girls at The Butterfly Club is an ‘acid reflection of the cartoonish femininity imposed on women’, says Robert Reid
Bed Time Stories for Girls presents teenagers as monsters. Terrible, […]

‘I find myself not only questioning the value of these tears, but also their cost. Who pays for these tears?’: Robert Reid on the Little Ones’ Merciless Gods 
Merciless Gods, the adaptation by Little Ones […]

The artifical dilemma of binaries: Robert Reid on Fifteen Minutes from Anywhere’s return season of Cock
The return season of 15 Minutes from Anywhere’s production of Mike Bartlett’s Cock gives us a satirical take […]

‘A triumph: remarkable, stunning, heart breaking’: Robert Reid on Silvia Calderoni’s extraordinary MDLSX
“I was born twice, I was first one thing and then the other.”

Silvia Calderoni rarely stops movin […]

Robert Reid barely survives a ‘howling maelstrom of transgressive audience behaviour’ in The Miss Behave Gameshow
As a life-long sufferer of social anxiety, panic attacks and agoraphobia, this was maybe not the […]

‘This is how theatre used to be immersive before the fourth wall: a participatory ritual of joy and storytelling and song.’ Robert Reid on Calamity Jane
It has been a good year in the theatre: there have bee […]

What does it mean when theatre changes the rules? Robert Reid dives into the worlds of immersion, participation, performance and play
It’s all play and no game, all release and no control. No one can find the ce […]

The final episode of Robert Reid’s first series of Witness Histories brings us up to the present day
This final episode in Robert Reid’s first series of Witness Performance Histories covers the period between the […]

Awkward, pained, anxious and agitated: things don’t go well for Louis. Robert Reid on 80 Minutes No Interval at Theatre Works
There’s something immediately old fashioned about 80 Minutes No Interval, Hot Mes […]

‘A yearning for simpler times, simpler narratives and endless familiarity’: Robert Reid reviews Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School of Rock
The apotheosis of the simplest ideas.

If we consider its ritual aspects, […]

‘The no-space, the no-time, the un-now, of waiting to die, is hauntingly sketched’: Robert Reid on Triage Live Art Collective’s The Infirmary
In the last few months, I have had cause to consider death from close […]

Witness Video Histories Episode 5.2
In this episode, Robert Reid covers the emergence of the New Wave of theatre makers in the 1960s and 70s, including La Mama, the Australian Performing Group and the NIDA […]

‘Beau is a body inhabited by ghosts that in turn summon ghosts’: Robert Reid on Dickie Beau’s Re-member Me
A hospital bed is wheeled on stage behind the curtain. The silhouette of Dickie Beau does stretches and […]

Prize Fighter packs a mighty emotional punch, says Robert Reid
Ghosts in the ring.

All day I am anticipating the sound a boxing glove makes on skin. The slap of leather on flesh, the soft, sick thud of its […]

Robert Reid finds the circus of NoFit State’s Lexicon impressive but lacking in focus
There’s something restrained about NoFit State’s Lexicon in comparison to Circa, say, or Cirque du Soleil. Each circus has i […]

‘I realise that I don’t believe any more that silence is Australia’s problem, that I think the opposite’: Robert Reid sorts through his dissastisfactions with Belarus Free Theatre’s co-production with Malthouse […]

Ascent is an ambitious work that examines the physical anxieties of women, says Robert Reid
Ascent begins in darkness.

An overture plays as our eyes become accustomed to the low light. Organ music, […]

Never Ending Night, a post-apocalyptic immersive experience, leaves Robert Reid pondering his role as an audience member
Never Ending Night is an immersive theatre piece written by Amelia Newman, Bridget Burton […]

Ten years ago, Elbow Room premiered There. During Melbourne Fringe, they remounted it in tandem with Here, a new work by the same artists. Robert Reid winds his way through the metatheatrical labyrinth
Ten years […]

Robert Reid says Cam Venn’s Charles Horse Lays an Egg is Fringe at its Fringiest
This review contains spoilers

When we enter The Loft at Arts House, Cam Venn is standing on the chairs in the seating bank. H […]