The Forum can barely hold the angry, horny hyperpop of this performer

MUSIC
Ashnikko ★★★★
Forum Melbourne, September 22

Ashnikko is the vengeful ghost of mid-00s femininity. They emerge at the Forum through an Alice in Wonderland-style magic door echoing Gwen Stefani’s What You Waiting For?.

Shaking a mess of violet hair in a Supre-flashback costume of white and neon yellow lingerie, Ashnikko (alter ego of American singer Ashton Casey) launches into Sticky Fingers.

With the whiplash backup-dancer choreography of Britney Spears’ heyday and Paris Hilton’s vocal fry, we enter the Smoochies fever dream, their die-hard fans a sea of sequinned fairies, glitter goths and Tumblr femmes.

It’s queer, chaotic electropop cabaret, all glitchy flickers, gut-punching beats, swagger and camp irreverence.

“Doctor, doctor, I need help!” Ashnikko cries, leading into the neon-flashing Full Frontal, simulating a botox lobotomy with a large cardboard needle.

Energetic pop-rap and Liza-Minelli-esque chatter counterbalances ultra-produced backing. It’s drag delighting in deviance with machine-gun cackles, the visceral lusts of Microplastics and ecstatic carnal gyrations in Slumber Party.

Ashnikko’s show needs over-the-top character and physicality to fight being swallowed by the stage. The Forum barely holds the angry, horny hyperpop of the TikTok sensation. A more intimate theatre could have enhanced the cabaret, a larger one could have amplified their star power.

The genderfluid genrefluid provocateur performs girlhood’s taboo interior, shunting between fizzing hyperpop wooziness and pounding, breathless anger.

Invitation is a trap anthem against violation. They dry-retch into thumping beats and bass growls of You Make Me Sick!. Chokehold Cherry Python drops from chunky metal riffs into apocalyptic battle cries: “Hey, hey! Death and decay!” Chichinya juxtaposes blood and sweetness (“Raspberry ribcage/What knife does your ribcage like?”)

As It Girl glitches with pop emotion, they strangle their past self. They have violently queered 00s-era objectification of the Alt/Cool/Tumblr/Suicide Girl.

As Ashnikko says: “It’s good to be a slutty little witch c–t in the year 2026.”
Reviewed by Kosa Monteith

THEATRE
Lord of the Flies ★★★
Theatre Works, until October 2

Lord of the Flies nearly didn’t make it into print and was widely derided upon release. But now, some 72 years later, William Golding’s story proves itself to be just as resonant as when it was first published.

A perilously steep, unadorned stage is the playground upon which the boys’ cruelties unfold in this iteration of Nigel Williams’ adaptation.

Mired in a quicksand of rapidly shifting loyalties, the boys are cornered into makeshift alliances that shift as quickly as they form – with the incline and a twin-set of metal, caged walkways elevating a select few over others, and providing a precipitous drop for those who refuse to conform.

Under Steven Mitchell Wright’s direction, the collective disintegration of the boys’ moral conscience is incredibly stylised, full of pomp and highly physical – the strong ensemble cast of 11 make full use of the multi-dimensional stage in simulated combat and immaculately choreographed movements.

The three fulcrums of the play – Ralph, Piggy and Jack Merridew – are adroitly conjured by Angus Leighton, Oliver Cowen and Sean Yuen Halley respectively, while Sam Gudgeon is a highlight as the gentle, troubled Simon.

Ben Hughes’ immaculately calibrated lighting coalesces with Jack Burmeister’s (at times, excessive) sound design to magnify key moments throughout the play. Ritual dance sequences in the original text represent the collapse of civilisation and the boys’ descent into savagery, but Golding couldn’t have envisioned Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage as their soundtrack, nor could he have predicted the Nutbush being used to stamp out an uncontained fire.

These contemporary injections steer us away from the racialised overtones of the source material while presenting us a vision of masculinity at its most free and unencumbered.

The unmasking of the boys’ latent viciousness is accompanied by a shedding of their British accents – still the paragon of virtue – in favour of their natural Australian cadences, synonymous with a loss of innocence.

Much of the machismo on display is explicitly lampooned, but if Wright’s intention was to poke fun at the hollowness of male fragility while underscoring its violence, the delicate balancing act never quite takes hold. The power of Lord of the Flies relies on the menace and the dread it invokes over unthinkable acts. This production lacks both.

Similarly, actors holding camcorders to project the minutiae of their every facial expression onto the main stage was initially employed judiciously, but is quickly overused to the point of exhaustion.

There isn’t enough space in this production for crucial developments to sit and breathe, and the effect is strangely muted in a production that feels simultaneously rushed and underdeveloped across its two-hour, 40-minute runtime.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

MUSIC
Jason Derulo | The Last Dance Tour ★★★
Rod Laver Arena, September 21

When Jason Derulo named his tour “The Last Dance”, he meant it. From the moment the Floridian singer appears on stage, his body does not stop moving.

Surrounded by perhaps the bendiest backup dancers in history, he gyrates, moonwalks, and pops and locks until sweat pours off his brow, wiped away occasionally by a very lucky hand towel.

For the Millennials in the crowd, of which there are many, the first hour is like being transported back to a 2010s house party – appropriate, given it’s Derulo’s 37th birthday.

Older hits like Whatcha Say and Wiggle have 40-year-olds screaming like teens. Backing tracks do much of the heavy lifting, allowing Derulo to slip and slide across the stage. But when he does sing – through a sassy little Britney mic – it’s smooth as butter, hitting falsetto notes like it’s nothing.

Newer songs like Acapulco and Savage Love, meanwhile, lean into his meme status, getting the crowd to shout the TikTok slang term “sheesh” as loud as they can.

Hearing him sing his own name – the famously corny audio tag – in perfect pitch is both hilarious and magnificent. His energy is best described as cheesy, especially when whipping out the viral Mi Chico TikTok dance. But through sheer enthusiasm, Derulo gets away with it.

Like with most house parties, however, Derulo doesn’t quite know when to pack things up. He throws everything but the kitchen sink onto the stage – pyro, confetti, streamers, a DJ hype man, more animal print than most zoos.

We travel from “Derulo’s lab” to his jungle, velvet room and volcano, all of which are signposted by strangely irrelevant AI videos of cherry blossom robots, vampires crying blood and futuristic merpeople.

By the time he gets to Don’t Wanna Go Home, the AI videos and bass-heavy dance breaks blur together, making it difficult to distinguish each song. This is especially a shame when showcasing Let Me Be, a new track that he has only performed live twice before.

Though the energy noticeably lifts again when Talk Dirty and Want to Want Me strike up – cashing in on the Derulo nostalgia – we’re already as exhausted as the back-up dancer who just did 10 backflips back-to-back.

Derulo is undeniably a gifted and polished performer. Every move is precise, down to the way he flips his microphone and coyly lifts his shirt. But at this last dance, there’s simply too much to feast our eyes upon.
Reviewed by Nell Geraets

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