Sh!t Theatre: Or What's Left of Us
- Anna Sokolova
- Sep 26, 2025
- 3 min read
Sydney Fringe Festival 2025 17-27 September 2025
The review
English Sh!t Theatre @shittheatre duo Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit are back at the Sydney Fringe @sydneyfringe.
Below here is an SMH link to the story behind this show. Check that, read this, and go see it - only two shows left for tomorrow, Saturday.
This theatre, which is serious and witty and funny about the world and politics, is now back without their signature white faces, but only with a long black trace of tears on their cheeks.
They always start the show to welcome everyone. This time, that was done with some treats given to the audience while people were gathering. A trademark of this theatre - they never get too intimate with the audience, but let the gap shrink and be close, in the same bubble as them, on the same tune.
Wearing old-time clothes, they also have funny costumes they change - badgers, and deers, and something like traditional ones, woven headpieces, like a hut and a crown. Started with the songs, it keeps going as a story of them discovering folk music. And then a folk club in West Yorkshire in Leeds, which a week later got firebombed and burned to ashes.
They are telling a weird story, making it sound hilarious - someone had to have such a strong feeling about the folk club to destroy it! - and it gets contentious, it is really funny.
Rolling on the chain of little episodes portraying vividly - another trademark - people in the club, and then moving to a folk fest in a country, where they spent time under the influence of mushrooms. That part was a belly-pain-loughing funny. They keep mixing in more and more songs, and more and more the subject shapes itself. It becomes all about death and grief, but without gaining the artificial weight of a tragedy. Folk songs - well, forgotten thing, right?, have an ancient purpose in them: to celebrate, to connect, to rest, to talk about feelings, and to process and let go. The British heritage of folk is beautiful and rich; it is a quintessence of wisdom and soothing.
Sh!t Theatre brings it in as a perfectly directed show, which, left in a free form, would fall into pieces, intertwining singing and talking. Small bits of their own stories, scattered over subjects at first, grow into a monologue shared by both, a flow of words, short sentences, repetitions, references to something they are eager to spit out. Their sorrow, loss, pain fuse. It starts to feel like a ceremony, an emotional procession. With two voices loud, it feels like the silent voices of the rest are merging in, giving everyone who needs it, bringing their own pain to the melting pot of letting it go. It was stunning.
Recently, I watched a highly acclaimed, rich show about grief. Posh, made technically perfect, poetic text and impressive visual arrangements - and it left me feeling cold. Theatrically, it was amazing, but for the brain.
This piece, brewed on a similar subject in its core, made simple with the highest cost, as I would guess, in the music instruments, wins hearts.
This theatre would not be itself if it were to finish on such a Pathétique note. Ha!
Stay a bit longer after the show, as they invited you. There is a singaround to follow, and it is entertaining, liberating, uniting fun.
Creative team and Cast
Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit
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