Gull (play reading)

Anna Sokolova
Jan 13
2 min read

Updated: Jan 13

Carriageworks Sydney 9-10 January 2026

The review

“Gull” (the full title - to add “Or the most lamentable comedie called love - Trans revenge”)

Produced by the Green Door Theatre Company @greendoortheatreco and presented at Carriageworks @carriageworks as a part of the Trans Theatre Festival.

9-10 January 2026

Content warning: the entire play is a solid sexual reference.

Written by Glace Chase @glacechase, a playwright (and one of the two lead performers) of an incredible “Triple X” staged at Sydney Theatre Company in 2022.

Here we are in 1665, plague-stricken London. Thanks to the ruler of the city, Earl’s speech, delivered with a big pomp from the main theatre stage, everything is locked down, along with an extended list of citizens, including actors, actresses and single women, who are destined to die. One actress and her boy-player dresser made a leap of faith: to dress up, and no matter what, to live.

“Gull” is a whiplashed bawdy farce, as declared - created in the style of Shakespeare and Restoration comedy.

Creating a hot, provocative hurricane of a story, Chaser is proficient in excellent, rich, evocative language, perfecting the style of a chosen era.

Sex in their writing (and content of socials) is a form of living, the main force to make existence.

In the “Gull”, the famous duo of a brain and heart is replaced by a trio by adding a thing down below. The latter, especially if it is an extended one, no matter real or attached, defines the level of domination, power, self-esteem, and overall standing.

Glace Chaser is fluent in this subject of bold sexuality, frivolity, vulgarity at times, with the aim to demolish the institution of patriarchy, the power of arrogant men. There is no mercy in her fearless fight.

This play is totally unleashed. It is funny. It is a language and emotions feast for an excellent cast who developed chemistry during only a short period of rehearsals.

It is a twisty story which sags at times, but there are exact early self-ironic moments when characters remark something like ‘ok, and what are we doing now?’

This reading follows the premiere of the fully staged work at last year's Adelaide Fringe Festival.

It is a perfect piece for the Trans festival, with Carriageworks as the place to present it. This performance space is famous for its open-minded, unrestricted, taboo-removing works with blurred edges of what is appropriate.

See this show when it is on next time, but if snobbish and cast into a rigid form of a ‘norm’, be warned - trans revenge can be a bang-loud success.