A hilarious comedy that manages to make you ugly laugh as it tackles issues like demonisation of women in the media and the unsuitability of clay as material for a fishbowl.
Every man and his dog has a podcast these days, and the debut performance from ‘every other theatre company’, Everything’s Kinda Stupid!, uses this medium and its tropes to tell a genuine story of friendship, public scrutiny, pottery and hitmen.
Sugar (Daniella Da Costa) & Monty (Molly Holohan) are best friends from Perth who host a podcast called S&M, which has exactly three subscribers. Using the platform to discuss their everyday lives, it’s a place for friendship and Shakira impressions. After an episode goes viral, they rebrand to Everything’s Kinda Stupid, where their relatability and candour encourage an ever-growing audience.
Featured guests on the show include Ellie Coleman (Maxi Ford), a high-school friend and wellness blogger who has fallen victim to a cult; Susan (Izzy Stonehouse), a dog hypnotist who runs the twitter account Susan’s Boils and definitely isn’t Susan Boyle; and John Johnston-Clarke (Faisal Hamza), a true crime expert whose three white-man first names should have been a sign that he’s perhaps not what Sugar hired him for.
During the successful rise of the podcast, Sugar, the more uptight and outwardly insecure member of the duo, begins to receive hate comments based on her nature; these echo the demonisation that real-life women who don’t fit the typical feminine media personality role face all too often. Complications ensue, but in the end, Monty sacrifices the popularity of the podcast to stand up for Sugar through the medium of song, valuing friendship and human connection above appealing to the fickle masses.
The podcast’s audience is represented on stage by three nameless people. Seeing hateful and snide comments, which are usually anonymous, presented with a face and a voice was a great representation of these all too familiar phenomena, and enabled an even greater sympathy towards Sugar. Whilst this theme of online hate is common in creative media nowadays, every other theatre company’s take on it enabled the overarching theme of female friendship to shine through and make a lasting impact.
It was honestly very refreshing to see a play featuring ‘normal’ women with many of the same strengths and insecurities experienced by women today, with no mentions at all of romantic relationships, or the stereotypical plotlines regularly assigned to feminine characters. Sugar and Monty are always supporting each other and lifting each other up, even in moments of conflict between them.
If you like funny people, podcasts, theatre, up-and-coming artists and joke-filled evenings, you’ll love Everything’s Kinda Stupid and its hilarious and heart-warming story.
Five clay fish bowls out of five.
Cate loves Fringe so much she is considering getting bangs.
Words by Cate Tweedie, attended Friday, 15 January 2021.