A Streetcar Named Go F***k Yourself
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https://www.eventfinda.com.au/2026/a-streetcar-named-go-fuck-yourself/melbourne/carlton
Date Reviewed: 28/07/2026
A Streetcar Named Go F***k Yourself
It has been a lousy time in Melbourne lately. There has been bothersome weather for weeks. The feral cats are all tucked away out of sight. Nothing seems to be growing. Our premier has been bloodlessly decapitated. Flu and fevers skitter their way through every restaurant and café. This has all been punctuated by a special kind of foul, sporadic rain and wind that only erupts upon you when you turn into a different street or walk down a specific road. It has felt like the city itself has been in a particularly sour mood. I found myself determined to cheer myself up once again and wandered up to the Motley Bauhaus to watch A Streetcar Named Go F**k Yourself*.
This is the latest play by Kissing Booth Productions, written by Jake Stewart. A play in two acts. I have seen previous works by this company, but this recent production is easily their best so far. This play is another of their grand homosexual parodies. The work is an obvious parody of Tennessee Williams, occupying the ramshackle, miasmic space of all of his works without touching on a specific one. Williams was a writer who borrowed from his life and threw it up on stage to entertain audiences. It proved to be his greatest strength and crippling weakness. Stewart understands this impulse well, stretching it towards absurdity without ever losing sight of the humanity underneath. The emphasis of this parody is always on laughs and distributes them with a deliberate and passionate energy.
The cast mirrors the energy of Stewart's writing skilfully. Gabriel Jarman, Marko Pecer, Wheeler Maurer, and Simon Brownjohn were divinely superb in their roles. I suspect each was written specifically for them. Each of their physical mannerisms worked superbly to complement their clever dialogue. Even their smallest gestures feel meticulously timed, adding another layer to jokes that are already densely written.
Despite its underlying parody nature, A Streetcar Named Go F**k Yourself* has an authorial confidence, maturity, and sophistication that makes it some of the best theatre in Melbourne. The wordplay is supreme and so remarkably clever. The script rarely settles for an obvious joke, instead building comic momentum through rhythm, repetition, and wonderfully excessive language.
Act Two is a radical shift and demonstrates Jake Stewart's ability as a writer to flex his queer storytelling muscles. What you (the audience) imagined was just a humorous romp through the Southern Gothic world of Tennessee Williams has now transformed itself into a drama more wrought in the language of Christos Tsiolkas' Melbourne. The transition is unexpectedly seamless, allowing the audience to realise only gradually that the emotional stakes have quietly shifted beneath them. The pacing and tonal shifts are clever while still maintaining the atmosphere we experienced downstairs. Callum O'Mara, as a teacher, shines in the second half as our slowly collapsing protagonist. Gabriel Jarman, as a student, also does a remarkable job of blending precocious energy and confidence. The result is a second act that earns its emotional weight without abandoning the play's comic sensibility.
Kissing Booth Productions has produced an exceptional work. Jake Stewart has written a play that feels both wildly entertaining and unexpectedly assured.
It is the kind of material that invigorates my long-held faith in Melbourne theatre. Writing of this quality should be presented as the face of a modern, queer Melbourne. This is precisely the sort of ambitious new writing that deserves a long life beyond the independent stage.
Reviewed by Nicolas Van Der Haar