Dave Drayton, Journalist

Maree Freeman’s script is littered with beautifully bleak poetry; a series of childish rhymes - about animals and their characteristics – are drilled in and drawled out, a frayed attempt at keeping or achieving sanity in the dusty prison.

“It’s kind of like childbirth,” an expecting Lisa Mitchell tells Dave Drayton about album number two, Bless This Mess.

“My main interest is that Parramatta is the sort of geographical centre of Sydney, there’s this mentality that says it’s all the way out there and it’s far away, but it’s actually not, it’s right in the centre.”

Meadows’ and Strong’s secret apocalypse is beautifully affecting, offering both the adrenaline of a thriller and the quivering tingle of a truly heart-warming, personal story.

"I was also really curious about the engery of kids on stage – I’d seen a version of A Doll’s House where this child was brought out at the end – when Nora’s deciding whether to leave her husband and her kids or stay – and this child came out and it just changed the play."

Sex With Strangers bubbles along with romcom pace, though by Act II the sex has all but fizzled out, and the strangers know each other too well as bickering about books takes the fore.

Mitchell has long been quaint, unassuming even, but Bless This Mess is anything but.

“And one of the things we’ve attempted to do with design in the Stables is make people come in each time and go, ‘Well, how have you done this?’ So I think this show will definitely fit that bill.”

Coward’s writing has wonderful balance; the parallels between relationships and individuals mirrored in a chaos akin to the muck one’s mind is clearly left in by love.

At the other end of the spectrum, Yellowcard are gracefully revealing their age, from the moment they hit the stage they are pleasant, polite, damn excited and, admittedly, a little tired after a performance that afternoon at Fat As Butter.