We follow four mid-20-somethings through their quests to make it out of the dating world alive, hopefully with somebody else clinging to the wreckage, from a Nightclub in Northbridge to the nudist beach in Swanbourne.

The cast performs with great commitment and comic ability. Natalie Di Risio as Eve is most notable for the buoyancy and energy with which she injects all of her scenes, but each of the ensemble performs amiably.

Under the direction of Ian Toyne, the physical movement in the piece is compact and effective.

The show’s only flat moment comes in a strange, drawn-out section wherein the girls conjure different men they have met from around the globe, seemingly there to give the boys a chance to show us all of the accents they can do. It is the only off moment in what is otherwise a consistently humorous affair about dating, sex and the perils of coffee.

Preceded by the ensemble’s hilarious physicalisation of the female reproductive system, Hello Boys finishes with a cute and neat ending to the dating cycle that creates a sense of structure in what is otherwise a loosely connected series of comic vignettes.

A good old bit of fun, which (if last night is anything to go by) is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

Hello Boys is showing at the Blue Room, starts at 7.30 and runs until Friday. Tickets are available from www.fringeworld.com.au.

On the Thursday and Friday the show is followed by an optional speed dating session for $40, which I am sad to say wasn’t available on the monday and so I missed the opportunity to review potential dates… Oh well.

An appropriate setting, stripped of all but Amanda Monroe and the story or her life thus far (though we are assured that there is a chance to experience this world later in the festival, when Monroe returns with her show Drags Aloud: The Priscilla Experience).

Recounted in about an hour, in at times not entirely cohesive monologue befitting the conversational and/or confessional tone of the piece, are Monroe’s experiences of feeling trapped in life and body and the various attempts at escape from this: starting with excelling at school and sport at an early age (even making the Olympic swimming squad) moving to an extended period of heavy drug use, climbing the corporate ladder and drinking later in life, a period that Monroe describes as assuring her an early grave.

But she didn’t hit that early grave and while much of Mangina is heavy there are enough moments of light and humour throughout to hold you and to ultimately celebrate this one person’s survival.

Where this show succeeds is not in virtuosity of language or theatrical wizardry or marvel but in the sincerity with which Monroe is able to communicate her tale of the many wrong turns that lead her to, at 48 and after a car crash, undergo the process of becoming a woman and continue the understandable quest to never become Norman Bates.

At times as unstructured as the life it represents, Mangina is nevertheless a fitting way to kick off the festival.