the worst of us - Fringe World 2026

Reviewed by Paul Treasure

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Fringe is an excellent opportunity for young and up-and-coming creatives to try their wings. As such, it is often filled with loud and insistent shows that try to vie for the audience’s attention and to make a name for themselves. In that prevailing environment, perhaps, theatre has made a brave and welcome choice to give us a show that is a lot quieter and a lot gentler.

Playing in the Geographe Room on the ground floor of the State Library, the audience enters the space to find two rows of chairs facing each other, running the length of the room, with a dozen cubic lamps littered around the space, ranging from full-length floor lamps to table lamps placed on some of the seats. These lamps provide both the lighting and the mood for the piece. Well designed and controlled by Robbie Fieldwick, these lamps continually change colour and brightness to highlight the various beats within the stories unfolding before us. At pivotal moments, these lamps drain of colour and shine a bright white as the text quotes the actual words of the people whose stories we are hearing. Almost as if we are literally stripping back the shadows and seeing these stores as they are, bare, without any embellishment. A clever, simple, and effective technique.

The piece itself tells the stories of three different people, looking back at the worst things they have ever done. Intertwining the three stories together to form a collage. Emmett Aster’s writing is once again clever and lyrical. His words ebb and flow between the three stories in a complex dance, washing over the audience like gentle waves. Aster performs the piece himself, accompanying himself on the guitar. At the beginning of the performance, he explained that due to the nature of the venue (i.e. inside a library), he would be performing it unamplified, and apologised if we were unable to hear properly. He needn’t have had these misgivings. If the audience wants to know what a performer is saying, they will make themselves hear, and Aster is well worth listening to. It is, unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of this performance that Aster himself is more self-conscious about being unplugged than he needed to be, and this shows in the performance. It came across as being somewhat apologetic, and there is nothing this piece or this performer needs to be apologetic about. This is a beautiful piece performed by an engaging performer, and it felt like he needed to trust this more. Being unamplified actually highlighted the gentleness and empathy of Aster’s delivery, which is one of the show's strengths. He presents no judgment on the stories, except that, as he says repeatedly, there are monsters in this story.

If there is criticism to be levelled at this production, it is chiefly that, for a show that is so atmospheric, there is very little light and shade in the delivery. Everything is performed at a similar pitch and cadence, and it is often very difficult to tell the three stories apart. I found the sameness in the delivery, combined with the dim lighting, the beauty of the writing, and the gentleness of Aster’s voice, to act like a lullaby, threatening to send this reviewer to sleep, not out of boredom but out of sheer relaxation. This is not the first production I have reviewed that was written by Emmett Aster, and like the last one, I found the writing and the concept exciting, but it was let down by the delivery. I sincerely hope Emmett gets the chance to look over the production again before he heads East to Adelaide Fringe. Because this is a production that deserves to do well, if he trusts in himself enough to let it.

Reviewer Note: Tickets for this review were provided by the theatre company.