Playing HAUS

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https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2025/playing-haus

Date Reviewed: 01/10/2025

Playing Haus is the theatrical equivalent of being hit in the face with a glittery frying pan.

Crass, chaotic, often painful and splattered with nonsense, it leaves you dazed with a mild concussion.

This campy drag comedy marks the first outing from VILE Production Co., a queer theatre collective that revels in a dark and dirty world of absurdity — and now, unfortunately, so must we.

It’s a murder mystery — technically — but the plot is so wildly all over the place it might as well be on roller skates. There’s a new killer every night, but after a while, you stop caring who did it and start wondering why you’re even there.

At the heart of the madness is Cuck Manor, home to Lorelai and Teddy Cuck (Louisa Cusumano and Sam Morris), their suspiciously European maid Mishka (Tom Weinert), and a visiting handyman named Ace Plumbing (Ez Kenworthy), whose toolbelt isn’t the only thing swinging.

They’re all trapped in the house during a storm, someone dies, and then… look, things get weird. Very weird. There’s humping, a couple of off-centre dance routines, bizarre accents, and a feather duster that probably deserves its own credit.

Cusumano opens the show by saying, “This is the stupidest thing that has ever been written” — not wrong.
That level of self-awareness is part of the charm, but also becomes a bit of a crutch. The script leans so hard into being ridiculous that it forgets to be consistently funny or to hold any real structure, with the actual whodunnit element lost amid the writhing and dusting.

Much of the humour feels like an inside joke, which occasionally left the small, mostly young audience in the dark.

The performances are brash, frivolous, and frequently unhinged — like a panto after one too many espresso martinis. There are some genuinely fun moments and plenty of giggles, especially if you enjoy exaggerated accents, excessive pelvic thrusting, and thoroughly drained innuendo about plumbing.

Playing Haus feels like a messy house party you showed up to a little too late — unruly, confusing, and nothing on the menu is quite what you ordered.

However, if you surrender to the madness, you may enjoy the romp.

Reviewed by Leila L.