{"id":13890,"date":"2025-10-09T04:19:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/?p=13890"},"modified":"2025-10-09T04:24:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:24:54","slug":"obseerver-the-worm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/2025\/10\/09\/obseerver-the-worm\/","title":{"rendered":"OBSERVER: The Worm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Online dating can often be a nightmare and just how nightmarish yet funny it can be was the focus of The Worm which played at the Motley Bauhaus as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.<br>A single woman tells us of her experiences dating online and looking for a mate, soul or otherwise. Stage left a giant animatronic worm silently watches on.<br>Created and performed by Taylah Whelan and described as semi-autobiographical, the script is snappy, replete with in-jokes for the hipster crowd as well as intellectual and pop cultural references.<br>Amusing at times, the jokes did not always hit their mark, sometimes because they were simply not funny, sometimes because her delivery was a tad off.<br>Not surprising in some respects, as the demands made on Whelan as a performer were challenging. Sometimes she played herself, sometimes she played the people who she was dating, sometimes she stepped away from the action altogether to comment on it.<br>The constant switching between these roles certainly kept the audience on its toes as well as the actress herself. And while always engaging with an easy charm about her, Whelan did occasionally drop the ball when a characterisation slipped into cliche or a scene wasn\u2019t established well or quickly enough.<br>Some of these shortcomings might have been picked up and addressed by the director Caitlin Soennichsen. However, it can be tricky for a director when working with someone who created the very material that they are performing.<br>It must be said though that, to her credit, Soennichsen kept the show moving at a fast pace which befitted the nature of the script. In addition, working with the animatronic worm must have presented its own challenges.<br>Admirable for its focus on the female experience of online dating then, as well as for its adventurous use of the bizarre prop the show is titled after, The Worm was an intriguing if slight, underdeveloped show.<br><strong>Review by Peter Murphy<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Online dating can often be a nightmare and just how nightmarish yet funny it can be was the focus of The Worm which played at the Motley Bauhaus as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.A single woman tells us of her experiences dating online and looking for a mate, soul or otherwise. Stage left a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"none","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-observer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13894,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13890\/revisions\/13894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dindi.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}