Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (reviewed Friday 6 March 2026).
Exit Laughing is a poignantly funny production about the inevitable end of life and how that affects those that are left behind.
Four friends have been meeting for a game of bridge for 30 years. When one of them dies, she leaves behind not only her ashes in an ‘ugly old urn’, but some mischievous instructions to keep things a little spicy.
Phillipa Coleman plays Connie, Julie Mathers plays Leona, Penny Church plays Millie, and Sarah Croake plays Rachel, Connie’s daughter. Luke Baweja plays Bobby, a fellow psych student in Rachel’s class.
Coleman)
The play is set in Birmingham, Alabama, where vowels are as long and flowing as the Tennessee River.
The immediacy of the furnished set, with lemon fabrics and deep green forest patterns, keeps the eye focused on the cast dressed in black. It suggests mourning laced with optimism and dark humour. In sitcom style, this is exactly how it plays out, directed by Annette Van Roden with unequivocal conviction.
Bobby (Luke Baweja), sitting Connie (Phillipa Coleman), Leona (Julie
Mathers)
Playwright Paul Elliott steers straight into fifth gear lowbrow comedy, with references to fellatio and vaginal endurance. The women are portrayed as feeling a bit empty, on low charge and needing a man for some excitement.
For the most part, the audience is politely shocked, until Bobby enters the scene, dressed as a policeman. From then on, until the play’s end, the audience erupts in continuous uproarious laughter, quoting lines in the foyer upon leaving the theatre. It’s testimony to the cast and director who understand the delicacy of adult humour and delivering it in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative or sleazy, though I do wonder if witnessing mature women ogling over a younger man is empowering women to enjoy the female gaze, or making fun of it.
Either way, Exit Laughing clearly had the audience doing just that, and it’s theatrically amusing to appreciate adult humour in an era that has become very serious and overly cautious.
Exit Laughing is playing at Club Ryde til 29 March. For tickets and showtimes go to https://www.huntershilltheatre.com.au/whats-on.html
Image Credit:
Daniel Ferris