How to Stay Married Without Exploding | Fringe Festival

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https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2026/how-to-stay-married

Date Reviewed: 30/09/2026

As I enter the theatre and raise my phone to photograph Fr  ancis Molloy, he asks whether I’m pointing a notebook at him. It is a small exchange, but Matthew J. Young has already taken us somewhere else. We are in the 1950s, phones belong on tables, and our television host has been standing on a landmine for ten years.

Welcome to How to Stay Married Without Exploding!, staged at the appropriately named Explosives Factory.

Francis, an American soldier who stepped onto the mine in Germany in 1945, has built a home and a television career around his predicament. We are the studio audience for his 400th show episode, a celebration of the marriage that has supposedly sustained him through it all. His wife, Annette, is due to join him.

There is just one problem. She is missing.

Young makes Francis an engaging host, sustaining his cheerful television patter even as his anniversary broadcast begins to unravel. He can turn practically anything into a joke, a segment or a reassuring piece of advice. His smile invites us to accept an absurd situation, and for we happily oblige.

The soft music, period costumes and studio setup create a convincing world. The staging makes clever use of the contrast between a bustling broadcast and its stationary star. Around Francis, the show keeps moving.

Young’s audience work is confident and personable. Questions about sleeping, showering and going to the toilet become opportunities for comic explanations. Suggestions for gifts and dates supply material for his marriage advice. At the performance I attended, my theatre buddy was recruited to sit in for his wife, and she adopted the persona of a pilot, adding another playful detour (five stars for Effie Chaniotis).

Yet the interaction gradually loses momentum. Once we understand the practicalities of life on the mine, some answers become predictable. The succession of audience prompts delays the more compelling story underneath. A tighter middle section would give the eventual change in mood greater force.

The performers playing the television crew are less assured than Young. They help establish the broadcast, but their characters feel lightly drawn. Stronger reactions to Francis’s increasingly strained attempts to keep the show running would add tension and make their presence more consequential.

Annette’s absence gradually exposes the distance between Francis’s advice and his own relationship. He tells us to be thoughtful, to listen and to discuss difficult things. Meanwhile, he keeps explaining away the fact that his wife has not appeared.

The jokes become increasingly uncomfortable. His account of Annette’s enthusiasm for her German physical trainer, and his attempts to present their lack of intimacy as sound relationship advice, reveal a man determined to maintain a flattering version of his life.

When her explanation finally arrives, the comedy becomes unsettling. Young handles the shift well. The genial host gives way to someone angry, frightened and suddenly unsure of the story he has told for a decade. His earlier charm makes that vulnerability more affecting.

Francis’s fear deserves sympathy. So does Annette’s exhaustion. The play leaves space for both, while asking how long a relationship can survive when one partner refuses to consider change.

Its strongest idea emerges in the closing moments when Francis realises that freedom brings uncertainty, particularly when the thing restricting us has also given us a purpose.

How to Stay Married Without Exploding! would benefit from sharper supporting performances and less time devoted to its audience routines. But it is inventively staged, anchored by a strong central performance, and ends with an unsettling thought: If you built your whole identity around being stuck, who would you become if you could move?

Highlights

• Young’s engaging performance and quick audience rapport.
  
• The convincing 1950s atmosphere and inventive studio staging.
  
• Effie taking the stage and pretending to be a pilot.
• An unsettling ending that gives the comedy greater depth.
  

Who’s it for?

Audiences who enjoy intimate theatre, dark comedy and audience participation, especially stories about the gap between the life we present and the one we actually live.