A collage featuring various Fringe artists
Graphic: Ashleigh Hastings/Imagery: Melbourne Fringe Festival
Graphic: Ashleigh Hastings/Imagery: Melbourne Fringe Festival

Reviews: Melbourne Fringe Festival 2024

Which shows have caught our eye this year? Time Out reviews the weirdest and wackiest of MFF 2024

Ashleigh Hastings
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The Melbourne Fringe Festival is in full swing and there are more than 400 events scattered throughout the city to sink your teeth into.

Keep an eye out right here for our reviews – we'll update this page daily as they come to hand.

Looking for more Fringe recs? Check out the weirdest, comedy and free events happening at Fringe this year. 

Melbourne Fringe Festival reviews

  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

 

As my eyes and ears are near-hypnotised by an engrossing combination of projections and soundscapes, Ayres’ voice melts through the headphones relaying the harrowing experience of finding himself in the grasps of a severe mystery illness, just months after starting to take testosterone as part of his gender-affirming care.

 

  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

 As an elemental reverie of a show that shimmers between forms, Conduit Bodies left tears dancing in my eyes and those of my plus-one. Its vast and ethereal beauty reminded me of the enslaved Caliban’s most remarkable speech in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

 

 

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  • Comedy
  • Stand Up
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

 If this were a real trial, there’s no way this crowd of jurors would find Reynolds guilty of anything – aside from being the “comedian with the most beautiful cervix” (and no, we’re not giving the context of that one away). This laugh-out-loud, surprisingly vulnerable and empowering solo show cements Reynolds as one to watch.

  • Drama
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Despite leaping between a wealth of characters – including Corinthian’s mum, co-workers and those on the front line as rising waters lap at the edges of doomed communities – the show’s never confusing and constantly engaging, even if some of the blows rightly punching up feel a little too blunt. That’s forgivable in a blazing work of timely import that’s evidently a call to arms (as the inaugural recipient of the Melbourne Fringe Climate Crisis Commission) and a warning of the human cost of ignorance on the matter. It’s a ferocious indictment on the slow-motion car crash that will most likely consume our planet.

 

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  • Drama
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

As Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’ echoes through Fortyfivedownstairs, audiences are drawn into the world of Nicci Wilks, poised for her performance in Bad Boy as part of Melbourne Fringe. Had I been oblivious to Patricia Cornelius’s hallmark style – characterised by incisive examinations of contemporary masculinity, misogyny, and domestic violence – the song’s implications might have eluded me. Or perhaps not, given that domestic violence saturates our headlines. Yet, within the 60-minute runtime, this weighty topic feels both rushed and stretched. 

 

  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

 

Trust me, you don’t need seriously shifty prophets to tell you this is destined to be one of this year’s mightiest Melbourne Fringe highlights. The real devil’s work is the run only lasting as many nights as Shakespeare had witches. Pray to Hecate you’re reading this while you can still conjure tickets or sacrifice whatever scalp needs be to see it extended.

 

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