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.