“This is beautiful theatre. It connects heart and mind… A joy.”
Kenton Stevens
4 Stars
Venue: fortyfivedownstairs
Melbourne
Dates: to 11 Oct 2026 (as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival)
“Are those two fucking, or friends?”
It’s a game. A challenge. An in-joke. And an exploration of the seemingly binary nature of how we might describe relationships. Surely, they are either ‘something’ or ‘nothing’. Is there really no other language to explain how we are together—no nuance, no other way to be?
This is the journey of discovery facing Xavier (Ken Paolo) and Sebastian (Lawrence Hawkins) in Eric Jiang’s searching, tender, funny and uplifting play Rhomboid. They are young lovers, explorers, friends, (almost) ex’s, besties, confidants, and soul mates. And they orbit one another, continually. Running, like parallel lines, as if to meet only at infinity. They search for meaning in their connection, as they search for meaning in themselves and each other.
In a series of often short, neatly constructed and pithy scenes, we follow Xavier and Sebastian from their last days of high school, through young adulthood, to when?—when they ‘glow up’? It doesn’t really matter. It’s the paths they follow that matter. It’s what those paths are like, for both of them. Their relationship shifts and changes, becomes closer, then further apart, then reconnecting, intentionally or not.
During it all, Xavier meets Lachie (Chad Rosete); a one-night-stand, a friend, a mentor, and a sort of spirit guide, especially in the aisle of a supermarket. Sebastian meets Felix (Rosete again, excellent in both roles); a partner, and solid, formed relationship, with ingredients like co-habiting, plans, and commitment. These relationships and experiences shape, test, counterpoint and mould Xavier and Sebastian’s ‘something’. Maybe by not being ‘this’ or ‘that’, they can find out what is theirs?
Paolo and Hawkins are terrific. Together, they carry the chemistry, fun, weight and pain of something too precious to lose. Paolo’s Xavier moves and sways with wonderful comic timing, and flashes of deep vulnerability. Hawkins’ Sebastian seems continually in a state of search, pondering, maybe a little risk averse, trying to work it all out: like some mathematical conundrum.
The play travels seamlessly under the deft direction of Margot Morales. I particularly enjoyed how set, lights and sound were used to bring Sebastian and Xavier’s text conversations to life, giving them form and weight.
Speaking of the set (Amy Todd, also responsible for costume design), Rhomboid was wonderfully enabled by a geometrically-shaped arrangement of squares and rectangles, creating an upstage multi-level right-angle, across and over which the actors could work. In turn, this was mirrored by the right-angled seating arrangement of the audience, and thus the parallelogram was completed, with a liminal playing space at its heart. The set works exceptionally well in this theatre—have I told you before how much I love seeing work here!?
Part of its beauty lay in how effectively the set was lit (lovely work by Spencer Herd). And, to complete the creative triumvirate, sound design and composition (James Gales) swept us through this changing world and its relationships, and was top notch.
Jiang’s text has pace and rhythm and style a-plenty. The play coaxes us into an existential consideration of what our relationships might be. How we think and talk about them. How and whether we define them. How we tell someone who is important to us about what our ‘something’ means to us, especially if it doesn’t neatly match with common shapes and patterns. Maybe, if we stop to think about it, all our relationships are more different than they are alike; more individual, just as we are.
This is beautiful theatre. It connects heart and mind, even when those parallel lines seem unlikely to ever fully intersect. A joy.
Kenton Stevens, Theatre Now
