Updated December 5, 2025 — 2:48pm,first published December 5, 2025 — 10:15am
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Key points
- MUSIC: Perfume Genius gives a five-star show at Forum Melbourne
- MUSIC: Parcels perform at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl
- THEATRE: Soul of Possum comes to fortyfivedownstairs
MUSIC
Perfume Genius ★★★★★
Forum Melbourne, December 4
Mike Hadreas, better known as Perfume Genius, has a chameleon’s voice, switching deftly from shimmering falsetto to an otherworldly, wavering register that seems to emanate from deep within his body. It’s a voice that’s at turns full of yearning and subtly rendered emotion, or dripping with swagger and sensuality.
Perfume Genius performs with Aldous Harding at the Forum Melbourne on December 4.Richard Clifford
All this was on full display at the Forum, where Hadreas, who has forged a career making mesmerising, impressionistic music for the queer and queer-adjacent, arrives on stage like a post-modern Saint Sebastian, ready to martyr himself to art.
The tour arrives off the back of his recently released seventh studio album, Glory, a work that puts his soul-baring lyrics in dialogue with layers of richly textured, cinematic instrumentation. Glory was largely written during lockdown and is a product of the uncertainty of those times: its animating themes are grief, anxiety, isolation. Despite this, it is not a depressing record, but rather something transcendent.
The show puts Hadreas’ range on full display, as he moves effortlessly from the propulsive, emotionally-charged suffering of In a Row to the plaintive and tender piano ballad, Me & Angel.
One of the most arresting moments arrives early in the night, where, in a world debut, Hadreas invites New Zealand’s Aldous Harding on stage to perform No Front Teeth. Already an album stand-out, the duet takes on new emotional resonance in this live performance, as Harding’s gossamer vocals soar to the Forum’s highest reaches and the song builds to a flaring, guitar-heavy climax. It is a rare treat for the audience and something unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.
Perfume Genius is a bodily performer.Richard Clifford
Elsewhere, Hadreas pulls crowd-pleasing hits from the Perfume Genius back catalogue, from the deliciously camp Slip Away to the eminently danceable On the Floor (its potential goes sadly unfilled as Melbourne audiences simply do not dance). Otherside delivers another show highlight, as Hadreas makes inventive use of silence and negative space before unleashing beautiful aural chaos. The encore comprises two covers – Big Star’s Kangaroo and Mazzy Star’s Fade into You – before the show closes with the exhilarating and defiant celebration of queer selfhood, Queen.
Hadreas is a bodily performer, contorting his limbs and executing gravity-defying back bends as he sings, though these objectively quite taxing moves seem to come to him as easily as breathing. He has a dancer’s grace and a showman’s unerring self-confidence. Yet, you get the sense that everything he does on stage is for himself first: the audience is merely there as witness.
Reviewed by Nadia Bailey
MUSIC
Parcels: LOVED Tour ★★★★
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, December 4
I dare you to stand still at a Parcels show. From the minute they hit the stage, the band’s blend of electro-pop and disco-pop rhythms has the crowd possessed, grooving along to the psychedelic funky beat.
The Australian five-piece indie band were formed in Byron Bay in 2014, and make the spontaneous move to Berlin that year. They have played some high-profile gigs in 2025, including Coachella and Glastonbury. This weekend, their national tour concludes in Sydney with two gigs on the steps of the Opera House.
It’s hard to stand still at a Parcels show. ©Martin Philbey
The band experiments with many different sounds across the set. Opening with Tobeloved, they show off their signature harmonies, reminiscent of The Beach Boys. It’s clear how Berlin Club culture has influenced their music when they perform Gamesofluck, the stage lit with an electric blue as the keys and guitar pulse. They performed Overnight, a single co-produced and co-written with Daft Punk after they attended Parcel’s first-ever show in Paris in 2016; the duo’s electronic influence is evident in the live sound.
Finallyover, their final song, has a much more mellow, retro rock feel like The Beatles. They perform a lengthy instrumental track, which feels improvised, exerting riffs that resemble the disco energy of Boney M and AC/DC’s ultra-rock Thunderstruck.
Parcels in full flight. ©Martin Philbey
“I know we are a lot of people, but we move as one tonight,” says one of the band, indistinguishable in the moody lighting, and that collective feeling carries through, maintaining a chill vibe across the entire set. During Summerinlove, the crowd leans into the sexiness with footage of couples kissing in the front row projected onto a heart-shaped kiss cam on the screen above.
It’s clear the band are having just as much fun as the crowd. Patrick Hetherington’s foot pounds the stage as Jules Crommelin’s hips thrust against his guitar and Noah Hill’s neck jerks back and forth like a chicken.
The band seemed to have as much fun as their energetic audience. ©Martin Philbey
There’s a sense of euphoria that fills the atmosphere at the all-ages concert. Like a rave, the infectious beats travel through your ears and all the way to your feet.
The band asks tech staff to light up the crowd, as they peer into the masses extending up the theatre and across the green of the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. As Crommelin perches at the end of the stage, he says: “Just going to take a second to take this all in.” What a start to the summer.
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar
THEATRE
Soul of Possum ★★★
fortyfivedownstairs, until December 13
A few months ago, after nearly 10 years of consultation, parliament passed Treaty legislation for Aboriginal Victorians. It’s the first treaty of its kind in Australia and one that not only acknowledges past injustices but also commits to returning decision-making powers to Aboriginal communities. Presented within this context, this latest staging of Soul of Possum serves as a potent and topical reminder of the past that still needs present reckoning.
Soul of Possum is based on the experiences of the playwright’s ancestors.Darren Gill
Based on the personal histories of playwright Brodie Murray’s ancestors (in particular his father and grandfather), the play is a taut reenactment of an altercation between colonial soldiers and members of an Indigenous population on the Murray River in Swan Hill. With a few cast changes, Soul of Possum’s latest iteration follows on from a successful season at Castlemaine State Festival and Yirramboi Festival in 2021.
It’s 1853, in Wamba Wamba Country and Marnuu (Balla Neba) is troubled by his dreams; the voice of Possum predicts wide-scale destruction by a hostile force, a devastation of both people and wildlife. But his fellow warriors Gundi (Wimiya Woodley) and Barru (Murray) are sceptical and mock his warnings.
Meanwhile, there’s a steamboat moored at the river, with a military expedition about to disembark to open up the country for “glorious empire”.
It’s a story most of us should know; this first contact skirmish between two parties who are completely alien to the other’s customs and cultures, and the resulting and continuing legacy of settler-occupation. The play asks us to imagine what it was actually like in the initial round of invasion and resistance, a pattern that would repeat itself across the land.
The play is a taut renactment of an altercation between colonial soldiers and members of an Indigenous population on the Murray River in Swan Hill.Darren Gill
The stage is sparse except for a large projection of the riverbank at the back, two platforms on the left that serve as the steamboat and a clump of river reeds, a tree, and a campfire to the right.
Preview night brought some rushed dialogue from the trio of warriors that should hopefully settle for the rest of the season. Maybe they feel there’s no time to waste: under Beng Oh’s direction, the 70-minute narrative moves fast, with the plight of both sets of white and blackfellas played out in alternate scenes before they finally meet.
Editor’s pick
What makes Soul of Possum interesting is that it dramatises the internecine in-fighting among each group. The First Nations Australians lose valuable time arguing about what to do with the threat of territorial trespass while the English marauders – Captain Gibbons (Leigh Scully), Lieutenant Bankes (Gabriel Partington), Dr Wilkins (Kevin Dee) and Irish convict Yates (Luke Mason) have their own on-board power conflicts to contend with. All four characters are performed with ease and conviction.
There’s an earnestness about this play and some unnecessary repetition in the script. The ending that brings us back to the present day also seems a bit too expository after everything that we’ve witnessed before. Nonetheless, Soul of Possum does manage to take us into the crossfire of colonial violence in its short, sharp stage time.
Reviewed by Thuy On
Soul of Possum was reviewed from a preview performance
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Nadia Bailey is a writer, editor, and critic from Melbourne.Thuy On is an arts journalist, critic, editor and poet.
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