This show was incred­i­bly pop­u­lar and got reviewed mul­ti­ple times dur­ing the Improv Fest! Check out a vari­ety of those reviews below.

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Reviewed by Thalia Kehoe Row­den

In an intense, mov­ing 60-minute show, the cast of four take inspi­ra­tion from real-life jour­nal entries – unseen until the per­for­mance – and invent and explore the lives of three dif­fer­ent women, over a span of years, through child­hood, ado­les­cence, and wom­an­hood.

Sticks and stones, they say, are the things to wor­ry about, but as the cast makes clear, the words peo­ple slap on us can bite deep, and stay with us.
There’s the new­ly mint­ed PhD, Dr Tal­bot (played by Liz Tal­bot), who is wor­ried about keep­ing her name if she mar­ries her ambiva­lent­ly-sup­port­ive part­ner (Mark Grimes). His habit of telling ‘fun­ny’ din­ner par­ty anec­dotes with her as the butt puts us firm­ly in her cor­ner from the first scene, and her earnest encounter with a blithe­ly clue­less stu­dent is absolute­ly hilar­i­ous.

Then there’s a par­ty girl who hasn’t quite grown up (played by Noelle Green­wood), still out hook­ing up with ran­dom guys on Wednes­day nights, but what might her mum have said to her if she were still alive? We’re all qui­et­ly delight­ed when she finds her path.

In the third sto­ry, Caitlin McGrath’s char­ac­ter finds that lock­down sour­dough
exper­i­ments bring a new dimen­sion to her qui­et life, and so does the sur­pris­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble plumber who appre­ci­ates her spe­cial­ist knowl­edge of tools. She has been haunt­ed by hurt­ful friend­ships, but even­tu­al­ly shucks off the labels that have stuck to her.

The com­bi­na­tion of gen­uine jour­nals and fic­tion­al imag­in­ings real­ly works, and gives extra dimen­sion to the sto­ries. The detail and nuance in the sto­ries, impro­vised on the night, were impres­sive and absorb­ing. The cast are all excel­lent, play­ing mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters in each other’s sto­ries, and
chim­ing in as a cho­rus from the shad­ows dur­ing the jour­nal read­ing. The min­i­mal­ist stag­ing is thought­ful, and there’s a pianist pro­vid­ing anoth­er lay­er of emo­tion in the back­ground.

Audi­ence mem­bers choose which jour­nals the cast will read from each night, so each show will unfold in a unique way. But the cast’s cre­ations pro­vide so many dif­fer­ent entry points that the shows will find space in the hearts of a broad audi­ence. In par­tic­u­lar, it’s great to see women’s ordi­nary sto­ries cen­tred in the show, and to have such skilled impro­vis­ers explore the gen­dered sub­tleties of how we see our­selves and each oth­er.

Reviewed by Cia­rán Sear­le

Laid out on chairs and box­es as we enter are a selec­tion of jour­nals, the inspi­ra­tion for the scenes we are about to wit­ness. An email sent out to the audi­ence a few days before asked for jour­nal entries that could be incor­po­rat­ed into the show. Bris­bane based impro­vis­ers Noelle Green­wood, Liz Tal­bot, Caitlin McGrath and Mark Grimes take to the stage, with Liz sit­ting to read the first entry.

As the read­ing con­tin­ues, the impro­vis­er set­tles into the char­ac­ter, and it feels quite voyeuris­tic to hear the inner­most thoughts of what we know is a real per­son sit­ting amongst us. She speaks of con­stant­ly sec­ond guess­ing her­self, ques­tion­ing whether her inabil­i­ty to find humour in the offen­sive things that her crush says is her own fail­ing. In a man­ner that will be echoed across the three sto­ries we hear the snide com­ments and labels of pos­si­ble peo­ple in this character’s life, like ghosts or mem­o­ries from the oth­er impro­vis­ers.

It is very clear to see the trust and expe­ri­ence between the play­ers as they push against the focal char­ac­ters, rein­forc­ing their self-doubts and inse­cu­ri­ties. Caitlin plays a demand­ing, male uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent, con­stant­ly ques­tion­ing and dis­man­tling the con­fi­dence of Liz’s pro­fes­sor char­ac­ter.
In our sec­ond sto­ry, we see Noelle take on the role of a par­ty girl on some­thing of a knife’s edge, The sup­port­ive, though not quite under­stand­ing rela­tion­ship with her father, played by Mark (who plays a vari­ety of allies and vil­lains to our female focus char­ac­ters through­out) is par­tic­u­lar­ly heart­warm­ing.

Each rela­tion­ship is played to high­light its com­plex­i­ty- there is bad with the good, and good with the bad. The impro­vis­ers’ emo­tive per­for­mances read as gen­uine, and some real tears are shed. The human sto­ries that we are invit­ed into res­onate for per­form­ers and audi­ence alike.

Ulti­mate­ly, though, these sto­ries are hope­ful. In the clos­ing mono­logues, each per­former is sur­round­ed by the oth­ers as they share the per­spec­tive gained through age. We see that abu­sive rela­tion­ships have been left, that run­ning a bak­ery has been tough, but ful­fill­ing, and that a woman feels able to advise and sup­port her daugh­ter through the lessons she has learned.

This is an improv show with a clear mes­sage about the resilience of women, and its earnest explo­ration of these themes is a rare and won­der­ful thing for an art­form often seen as noth­ing but late-night gags.