From underneath the half-opened roller door, a strange green glow reaches across the street pavement. Melancholy music befitting a long ago circus wafts into the graffiti-laden dead end street where a crowd wait impatiently. At last, they’re invited to duck into the abandoned quilt factory and find their seats, ready for A Grim Era, the debut production from Melbourne’s fledgling puppet company Smallpox Theatre.

Set within a junkyard theatre, A Grim Era is the story of Is and Isn’t, two vagabond clowns played by Gemma Lark and David “Splatt” Rosenblatt, who fall in love only to discover their affection waivers with time, leaving behind a dysfunctional coexistence built on tragedy.

A Grim Era is an experimental, hybrid puppetry production with absolutely no dialogue, which leads to many opportunities for inventive expression. Puppetry, props, music, set design and lighting are all used flawlessly to create the vibrant world in which the drama unfolds. The attention to detail and imagination shown in the construction and design of the set, props and puppets is especially impressive with every aspect serving a meaningful role in the context of the greater story.

Despite the heavy subject matter broached in A Grim Era, the show is not without its lighter moments. The clowns’ courtship is especially sweet and offers moments of genuine humour. Well-timed physical comedy and puppet mastery from both actors prompts many laughs, which makes it all the more heart-breaking when the tone of the performance eventually shifts. One moment, you’re laughing at a rubber chicken, and the next, struggling to hold back tears. These moments of high emotion work so well because they are given time to be fully felt by the audience. Action slows down so that we can appreciate the emotion playing out on stage; emotion so raw and powerful that its prolonged acknowledgement can become almost too much to bear.

A Grim Era is certainly as its name suggests, but in the most beautiful way. While it can become easy to dislike a piece of art for pulling your heart out, crushing it into one thousand pieces and then stomping all over it, this performance is too creative, too thoughtful and too wonderful to incite resentment. While it is a shame that the light-hearted whimsy the clowns begin with does not extend to the performance’s end, Smallpox Theatre are to be commended for their brave decision to stay true to the gravity and reality of the situation.  A definite must-see this Fringe Festival, A Grim Era is an example of the very best kind of story-telling – that which makes you feel.

A Grim Era runs until 13 October at the Abandoned Quilt Factory. Tickets are $18 full-price or $15 concession (Tuesday sessions are $13).

The persistence of Ruth Wilkin has to be admired. Her dad has long since stopped pretending to be interested in her newest musical compositions and her mother nags her to be more like her academic sister, but Ruth will have none of it. She has a dream, the only dream worth having: to be a star. The award-winning Just a Little Something I’ve Been Working On is a satirical take on cabaret and the occasional enthusiastic, but misguided performers within it.

Everything about this cabaret suggests it could be playing out in Ruth’s living room. From the props from home kept in the stage’s back corner to the long golden gloves that Ruth may have pulled from the costume box, Just a Little Something I’ve Been Working On seems like every show ever put on by an excited child for her very patient parents – that is, if the child is a gifted musical prodigy. The seemingly amateur, hands-on approach taken in this performance is well-considered and deliberate. Despite wanting to give off the air of a seasoned performer, Ruth’s enthusiasm and erratic mannerisms give her away. This elaborate ruse is well-maintained throughout the show and is, in part, what makes it so much fun.

Clearly a gifted singer and songwriter, Wilkin tells the story of her journey to the cabaret stage through original songs, anecdotes and flashbacks. Fuelled by her refusal to acknowledge the series of rejections she’s received over the years as little more than the failure of others to admit her brilliance, Ruth puts on a cabaret. As you do.

All the songs are hilarious and some, like the one that displays her composition method, are refreshingly clever. The appeal of Ruth is how oblivious she is to her own awkwardness. She pulls all of the traditional cabaret stops – taking sips on stage from her martini glass, leaning on the piano – but somehow gets it endearingly wrong. Her enthusiasm and touch of the dramatic make her immediately likeable, which is confirmed when she sings the opening strains of her first number.

Just a Little Something I’ve Been Working On achieves an ideal balance of the sung and the spoken, coming to a satisfying cyclical conclusion. Ruth’s humorous lyrics, antics and fitting encore will stay with you long after the cabaret’s end, prompting the question: how on earth did she get knocked back at all of those auditions?

Just a Little Something I’ve Been Working On runs until 7 October at The Butterfly Club. Full ticketing information is available on the Fringe Festival website.

Online dating doesn’t have the stigma associated with it that it once had, but what if rather than meeting your partner on eHarmony, you met them on Facebook? And what if you’re only just about to meet them in person for the first time, five months after you started Skyping, and you’re flying across the world to do it? Written by Aleisha McCormack and directed by RocKwiz’s Julia Zemiro, How to get Rich is a comedic play based on McCormack’s real-life decision to travel to London to meet her boyfriend of five months face-to-face for the first time.

McCormack shines in this one-woman show in which she plays Aleisha, a caricature of herself. Set on the flight from Melbourne to London, How to get Rich tracks Aleisha’s gradual descent into panic as she imagines the worst possible scenarios that will greet her at Heathrow. Initially, Aleisha comes across as an amusing, but ultimately annoying character when it’s established that she is definitely not the kind of person you want to find yourself sitting next to on a 23-hour flight. However, through a clever script and McCormack’s convincing performances of lesser characters, the audience is soon invested in Aleisha’s campaign to “get Rich” (as in Richard), hoping that it doesn’t all go awry.

McCormack proves herself a chameleon, convincingly and humourously conveying a number of characters during the hour. Choice props and costume pieces are also effectively used, helping to immediately identify individual characters.

The minimalist set, featuring a pair of red aeroplane seats and a television,  acutely captures the feeling of international economy travel, which is further assisted by lighting changes and PA announcements from the flight attendant. The in-flight entertainment displayed periodically on the television is also used to great comedic effect, playing the role of Aleisha’s Jiminy Cricket.

The genius of this play is how accurate and identifiable so many of the characters’ views and actions are, which makes it exceptionally funny. While many of us haven’t travelled across the world for someone we met online, we have all taken risks and dreamt up crazy ramifications for our decisions. We all know someone a little bit like Aleisha’s gossiping aunt, or have had a horrendous time sleeping in economy. To an extent, we can all relate. How to get Rich features a great performance, bikini waxes from Hell, kidnapping, ABBA, caps abuse and just a little bit of swearing – really, something for everybody – making it a thoroughly entertaining ride from start to finish.

How to get Rich runs until 7 October at the Trades Hall – Annexe. Tickets are $22 full-price or $18 concession (group tickets are $18 per person for 5 people).

They say you don’t know yourself until you take your first hit. If that’s true, it seems fair to say that Tegan Higginbotham knows herself extremely well. In Million Dollar Tegan, Tegan’s sixth appearance at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, we hear the comedic story firsthand of how Tegan came to find herself competing in a professional boxing match in front of more than one thousand people.

As Tegan’s quick to point out, she’s doesn’t look much like a boxer; “Tinkerbell” is a better descriptor. In fact, she doesn’t have much of a killer instinct either, but what she does have is a lot of determination and a mind impressionable enough to act on a casual viewing of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby.

Tegan is an inclusive and captivating storyteller who, after her amusing entrance to no lesser music than the Rocky theme, makes the effort to chat with her audience and throughout the show, acknowledge their reactions. Tegan’s comfort with her content is obvious, having performed Million Dollar Tegan as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival earlier this year, which earnt her a “Best Newcomer” nomination. However, Tegan seems to have made alterations to the show specifically for the Fringe, updating the content in light of recent events pertaining to her professional boxing career, as well as working in some special “artistic” moments.

Tegan’s jokes come thick and fast over the hour. Some are ruder than others, though, and while strong language is used throughout the performance, it is not excessive. That said, Million Dollar Tegan also offers some more heart-felt moments, especially when we come to Tegan’s explanation of the boxing match itself. Through her physical comedy and storytelling prowess, Tegan is able to create the world in the minds of her audience, conjuring vivid pictures of the situations described and the people she met along the way. However, the occasional joke can fall flat due to its outlandishness, temporarily pulling the audience out of the action as they question how much of what Tegan is saying actually happened, and how much is fabricated for entertainment’s sake. Luckily, these moments are short-lived and far between.

Contrary to the description on the Fringe Festival website, footage of Tegan being hit in the face is not shown as part of the show because as Tegan explains, she still cannot bring herself to watch it. (However, it is available on her website.)

Unfortunately, on the night of attendance, Tegan’s audience was disappointingly small. I’ll attribute this to it being Grand Final day, but a show such as this really does deserve a bigger crowd. Funny, charming, oddly inspiring and just a little bit rude, Tegan Higginbotham in Million Dollar Tegan is definitely worth a see.

Tegan Higginbotham in Million Dollar Tegan runs until 13 October at the Rehearsal Room – North Melbourne Town Hall. Full ticketing information is available on the website.

Lime Champions, the weekly radio sketch show, has at last ventured beyond the walls of the 3RRR studio to give us Nightmare Tales, an hour of very bizarre sketch comedy. Comedians Damien Lawlor, Josh Earl and Kirsten Law star in this self-described “comedy show about modern life – that is, if your life is one of confusion, miscommunication, isolation, paranoia, helplessness and failure.”

In five distinct sketches that range from the surprising to the downright absurd, Nightmare Tales does well to avoid the sketch comedy trap of a disjointed performance, utilising several clever devices to unify the hour’s hilarity. An omnipresent voiceover (think Vincent Price in Michael Jackson’s Thriller) links the sketches that might otherwise feel segmented, while getting a few laughs on its own merits. Recurring devices like miscommunication between characters are, rather than repetitive, effective in tying the different threads of the performance together. Disappointingly, several references made to the “script” seem significant at the time, but don’t come to much, which feels like a wasted opportunity for the show to become more self-referential.

Nightmare Tales makes the most of all three comedians. They particularly shine in the final skit of the night, which is the most theatrical, melodramatic and, if last night’s audience was any indication, laugh-out-loud funny of the entire performance. It’s also an education: who knew there were so many alternative expressions for defecation?

The originality and inventiveness of its sketches is the greatest strength of Nightmare Tales. With that in mind, the opening sketch is probably the weakest; while initially amusing for its ridiculousness, the novelty soon wears thin before moving to the next sketch, but when it does Nightmare Tales truly does hit its stride.

Given Lime Champions’ radio background, it’s no surprise that audio is used particularly well in this show – especially in the sketch which features Damien in a rather unusual performance making an even stranger confession. The imagination displayed in this sketch and others is impressive and ensures a real treat for the audience as events unfold and revelations are made, few of which this reviewer saw coming.

Unfortunately, while they do well with audio, the television, which comprises part of the minimalist set, is underused in the latter part of the show. This wouldn’t be such a problem had the suggestion of it playing a bigger role not been made earlier.

Despite its minor downfalls, Lime Champions’ Nightmare Tales promises many unexpected twists and turns that make for an entertaining and well-paced comedy experience – amusing, horrifying, surprising, and definitely not the stuff of comedy nightmares.

Lime Champions’ Nightmare Tales runs until 2 October at the Tuxedo Cat. Tickets are $20 full-price and $15 concession.