From a festival director’s international perspective, Melbourne is the best city in the world for independent theatre makers, asserted Sheehy. We already know it, but we still like to hear it.

Some attention to subtlety and abstraction would have made it a more intriguing play.

If you want to laugh and be surprised, go see this. If you are scared of clowns, this might just make you love them.

With the closing line, “I must have nothing in common with myself”, the total entrapment and isolation of insomnia is finally and most powerfully branded on the audience.

The reason I’ll see it again, is in the complex of seemingly infantile jibberish that ITKY brings into the light.

The only omission is a lack of references to the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Still, it offers a very different, and infinitely richer, picture of the region than what you will find in the news.

The conversation comprised a vigorous and inspired debate with each panellist agreeing on how privileged we were to be having it in the first place.

Lucy Guerin’s Conversation Piece is a delight, engaging audiences with depth, whimsy, revelation and humour. Top stuff.

An intelligent and astonishing dance work.

Nudity may still help push boundaries today, sure. Yet, for this alone to be so heavily pushed hardly seems avant-garde.

Although some of the shifts in sound are quite jarring and the changes in musical styles don’t quite gel, overall this is a remarkable piece.

Never taking itself too seriously, it’s a dance show with substance and imagination.

The Shape Of Things, on the other hand, is just as concerned with truth and integrity in art, as it is with its superficiality.

After three hours I’m still transfixed, but it’s getting hot in here… must be all the sexy people on stage.

This is a little disorientating, like getting off the Round Up, but also revolutionary.

This play is only mildly appealing in an anachronistic sense and as an insight into modern Australia, it is sadly lacking.

Like European festivals, White Night is best enjoyed with your closest friends and like-minded thinkers.

A hyperactive show; saccharine sweet with a touch of the bizarre.

There’s also the juggling sensation Girma Tsehai, whose ball handling skills would rival those of Jenna Jameson.

There’s no mistaking his talent as a young playwright and his naturalistic dialogue is handled well by the actors.