FITZ HAPPENS: Home Is Where The Haunt Is
FITZ HAPPENS: Home Is Where The Haunt Is, New Ghosts at the Old Fitz, 22 October-1 November 2025
Here’s the thing: a tiny, huge theatre company wants to raise money to fund new Australian plays. An idea is hatched: ask five already established playwrights to donate a short, one-person play on the theme “Home is Where the Haunt is”. Then, ask five actors to do each playlet. Ask creatives if they will also participate – including lighting, costumes, and sound – and ask them all if they will do it for free.
The result is a remarkable 80 minutes of electrifying theatre, produced over three days of rehearsal. Catching up at the 5pm Sunday show, we’re delayed 10 minutes because an actor is ill and another is on the way to fill in and will work script in hand – “on the book”. We already know another actor is down and her role will be taken by Old Fitz executive producer Emma Wright, also on the book. Live theatre is always thrilling, or should be. It’s inherently unstable, unpredictable, and unique. In this instance, it’s even more s,o and the pay-off is fabulous.
It begins with Louis Nowra’s rich tale of small-town FNQ drama school students bussing through the night and the rainforest to perform The Tempest at the home of a rich benefactor. It’s told by the student stage manager (splendid Emma Wright). A drenching downpour, a flooded engine, a peculiar bus driver, and a weird, deserted roadhouse drag all involved, including the audience, into a Tropic-Gothic nightmare.
Four more mini-epics follow on a gorgeous set of fairy lights, a couple of armchairs, bits and pieces, and many 1950s vintage lampshades and hanging lights. Are we looking at the literary and mythological idea of a “shade” being a ghost or spirit? LOL.
Next up is Melanie Tait’s brooding, comic take on the puzzles, sadness, and problems associated with unexpectedly dying young. Jennifer Rani realises she’s dead because no one says hello in the coffee queue, and the barista looks right through her. At her funeral, she sees how quickly mourners start talking about anything and everything but her. It’s poignant and funny – as tricky a mix as any, and it works.
The third playlet, by Kate Mulvany and starring Charles Wu, should come with a big fat trigger warning as he plays a Clown (Gaaah.). Not just any old clown but a Death Clown. This character, he tells us, as he prowls the perimeter looking alarmingly like he’s about to do Audience Participation, is the one who used to be hired to attend your funeral and tell of your life. If that were not enough, he also makes a balloon animal. If you’re either Coulrophobic or Globophobic, don’t sit in the front rows. Otherwise, it’s awfully good.
If you’re still with me, a piece by Nicholas Brown is next, and the heroic Isabel Burton performed (at 45 minutes' notice) his sly take on a young woman’s struggle with cultural difference, classical Indian dance, and goddesses, Pauline Hanson and Ed Sheeran. And all because the sign-writer mucked up the banner and wrote “Ranga” instead of “Ganga”. You have to be there.
The final piece has Belinda Giblin as an elderly sort whose passions are her small dog and designer clobber. It’s by Mary Rachel Brown, who’s on a bit of a tear, and it whiffs of being likely to appear at a later date in a longer piece, so rich and bonkers is the character. Mind you, Giblin does deliver a master class in comic timing and pathos, so it’s to be hoped that we’ll see her again, even though she makes huge efforts to do away with herself in ten minutes.
It’s a glorious night out, and all in a good cause.
The unseen heroes who gave their time and talents to Fitz Happens: director: Mehhma Malhi. Executive producers: Lucy Clements and Emma Wright. Producer: Izzy Williams. Assistant Producer: Veronica Eze. Costume Designer: Ruby Jenkins. Lighting Designer: Izzy Morrissey. Sound Designer: Fin Hogan. Stage Managers: Justin Li and Sasha Byk Giroux. Stage Management Mentor: Oscar Ali. Social Media Manager: Karrine Kanaan.
