REVIEW: The Platypus - Soft Tread, QPAC

Presented by Brisbane Festival and Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Produced by Soft Tread Enterprises

Written and Directed by Francis Greenslade

Performed by John Leary and Rebecca Bower

Photography by Mark Gambino

“Just because I don’t have an arts degree doesn’t mean I’m a moron.”

The platypus is one of nature's weirdest creations: it's like a mix of duck, beaver, and a cosmic joke. It shouldn’t make sense, yet somehow it works. Francis Greenslade's play, The Platypus, lands in that same wildly inventive space.

This two-hander, performed by John Leary and Rebecca Bower, smeared itself across theatre styles: a black comedy, a domestic drama, a musical, a farce, a philosophical piece... The result was a genre-defying collection of vignettes that explored love, resentment, family, and the messy business of relationships, all with a wink to the world of theatre itself.

The show began before we even realised it had. Leary and Bower wandered onstage mid-gossip, sizing up the crowd and debating what this mysterious production might be about, instantly pulling us into their chaotic play-within-a-play universe. From there, we plunged into a string of fast-shifting vignettes: tense marital spats, neighbourly gossiping, school-gate politics, and moments of genuine heartbreak. Costumes items, accents, and entire theatrical worlds flickered by. Both actors moved through characters with astonishing versatility, scenes bleeding into one another like hazy memories, sometimes changing trajectory mid-sentence!

As Richard, Leary skipped between short-tempered gruffness and flashes of softness and humanity. He came alive whenever he slipped into another persona, whether as a ventriloquist with a foul-mouthed puppet or diving into Shakespearean prose. Bower matched him note for note. As Jess, she radiated a warm, motherly composure offstage, yet carried a brittle tension in the domestic scenes onstage. Her comedy was also excellent, especially during a stand-up moment where she quipped, “I lost my husband, but I gained the TV remote!” By the time the Greek chorus-style finale arrived, we had travelled through bitterness, regret, and reconciliation, and somehow still left smiling.

Greenslade’s writing embraced a dizzying diversity of forms. One moment we were watching a couple argue in their kitchen about Netflix and vasectomies; the next we were in an interview with Lady Bracknell (yes, pulled straight from Earnest) as a custody officer. There was even a musical theatre detour in strong New York accents, complete with an original number riffing cheekily on Sondheim. Later still, a sitcom sequence with canned laughter morphed into something completely tragic.

Even when the world tilted into different genres, the heartbeat of it all remained recognisable: the dance of co-parenting, the resentment for your ex, the love for your child... At the centre of all the chaos was a child’s drawing of a platypus stuck to the fridge, a tiny anchoring reminder of the family that these fractured scenes revolved around. The fleeting appearance of their son Jack, played by guest artist Eddie Hill, added a quiet melancholia to the otherwise abstract scenes where his absence loomed.

I particularly loved how the play toyed with audience perception. At interval, the characters discussed the production as though they were spectators themselves. Greenslade seemed to be inventing his own form in real time: part therapy session, part sketch comedy, part existential cabaret. By the time the final moments — “I wish we could go back, start again” — landed, the laughter had softened into something tender.

As someone who grew up an only child in a tense household (my comfort animal was a wombat, not a platypus), this piece hit somewhere deep in my bones. The invisible family members, the quiet tension, the not-so-quiet anger, the affection and fury tangled together — it all rang painfully, beautifully true. Sitting beside Greenslade himself on opening night, I found myself laughing, wincing, tearing up, and hoping he noticed just how much I enjoyed and respected every bizarre, brilliant second.

The Platypus was exactly what Brisbane Festival does best: bold, experimental storytelling that still lands squarely in your heart.