★★★

“a jack of all trades, struggling to fully realise the richness of the themes it taps on”

Art reckoning with the covid-19 pandemic is still emerging, rather than established, with many of us only beginning to process its impact from a distance. Fickle Eulogy steps into this uncertain space, attempting to navigate a fresh, complicated loss, and understand who or what is responsible for it.

Ann is pacing the kitchen rehearsing her mother’s eulogy, panic bleeding through her pauses as she straightens her outfit and worries when to take the cheesecake out of the fridge. In an hour, family and friends will arrive ready to celebrate her mother’s birthday, as requested, instead of a funeral. An Alexa device chips in with warnings of “negative language” and a charged tone, sending Ann back and forth in her ruminations as she scrambles for the perfect tribute.

It’s a compelling and emotional set-up, but one with a deliberate stop-start rhythm, thanks to Alexa’s interruptions. These in-scene resets do allow for some moments of sharp character work, exploring themes and anxieties Ann has about her mother’s death. A chirpy meditation practitioner and a gun-loving American are brash and cartoonish, effectively spotlighting the absurdity of pandemic-era discourse and the blurred lines between holistic and pharmaceutical health. Online misinformation becomes an uncanny and cabaret performer, whispering mistruths and hatred to a rapt audience. These moments were bold and ambitious, but too fleeting to sustain momentum, disappearing just as they began to really intrigue.

As the creator and sole performer, Nikol Kollars brings a commanding stage presence, amped up by Javier Galitó-Cava’s direction. Her versatility is proven through her vocal talent, and the adoption of strange and heightened characters, where she’s able to find a balance between embodying the forces to blame for her mothers’ death and mocking them. Lighting and sound design from Koa Salazar, alongside original music from Frederic Wort, helped ground the piece and provide a sense of resolution. The stage was set for a reckoning of the power of technology against human life, but the Alexa sits on it relatively unchallenged. It practically hums with untapped possibility. Similarly, gnarly topics like conspiracy thinking and the responsibility we owe elders are skimmed over without really delving in.

For all its ambition, Fickle Eulogy becomes a jack of all trades, struggling to fully realise the richness of the themes it taps on. It does land on a moving final note, with Hawaiian song bringing a nostalgic emotional clarity to Ann’s pre-party jitters. Ultimately, it’s a production which accurately mirrors the fragmentation of pandemic grief, but perhaps a little too closely, leaving us scattered and searching for a spark.

EGGS AREN’T THAT EASY TO MAKE

Riverside Studios

★★★

“a funny and heartwarming production”

Claire and Lou are swiping through a sperm donor app when they’re stopped in their tracks by the substandard offerings available. As they start to consider Claire’s best friend Dan as an alternative candidate, a host of questions and concerns come to the fore. Eggs Aren’t That Easy to Make imagines one queer couple’s complicated journey to parenthood, with all the anxiety, excitement and nipple cream that comes along with it.

Four birthing balls appear on stage for an ante-natal class, then remain throughout, serving as sofas and bar stools and sitting under every scene as a reminder of the elephant in the room: babies. Once pregnancy and children have been mentioned, they can’t be unspoken; the topic lingers, waiting to pounce. The cast balance precariously on the birthing balls as conversations about cervix dilation throw them off kilter. This instability is often rendered through physical comedy, poking fun at the absurdity of pregnancy in the Instagram age. At times, Lauren Tranton’s direction tips the tone into outright silliness, with camp transition choreography that sees the cast leaping across the stage in bursts of confetti.

Claire (Rachel Andrews) is a bit freaked out by pregnancy, so she’s glad that Lou (Esther Carr) is so keen to carry their child. The pair are affectionate and tactile, but feel new and on-edge as a couple, missing the grounded ease of a truly long-term partnership. Dan (Tom Kingman) is hilariously awkward and disarmingly enthusiastic about taking on the role of “baby daddy”, as he puts it. Sophia Rosen-Fouladi delivers the stand-out comic performance as the ante-natal teacher Laura, whose pointed focus on pronouns and insistence on jungle music strikes a perfect balance between self-awareness and obliviousness. She also plays Naomi, Dan’s firmly child-free girlfriend, whose perspective it would have been interesting to explore in greater depth.

Maria Telnikoff’s script offers a palatable blend of wit, silliness and heart, but it also contains some distracting inconsistencies. For instance, the couple attend ante-natal classes before they’ve even begun fertility treatment. Dan’s actions so clearly over-step the agreed boundaries that there’s no real tension in the conflict, as it’s clear who is in the right, and the more interesting nuances of the grey area between sperm donor and parent are underexplored. Even when Claire and Lou argue, the stakes feel low – no one is actually pregnant yet, in fact, they haven’t even made it to their first fertility check-up. These issues snagged, and along with a few lighting choices that left characters obscured, gave the production a slightly amateur feel.

I’m a sucker for a romcom, but here the framing ultimately holds the piece back from a more incisive exploration of IVF, friendship and queer relationships. Instead, the show sits somewhere between a truly farcical comedy about the absurdity of artificial insemination, and a probing investigation of an unusual family set-up, never fully committing to either. It may not dig as deep as it could, but it is a funny and heartwarming production.

Tag Archives: Jessica Hayes

FICKLE EULOGY

★★★

Circle and Star Theatre

FICKLE EULOGY

Circle and Star Theatre

★★★

“a jack of all trades, struggling to fully realise the richness of the themes it taps on”

FICKLE EULOGY

Circle and Star Theatre

Reviewed on 7th April 2026

by Jessica Hayes

Photography by Mattia Sedda

FICKLE EULOGY

FICKLE EULOGY

FICKLE EULOGY

EGGS AREN’T THAT EASY TO MAKE

★★★

Riverside Studios

EGGS AREN’T THAT EASY TO MAKE

Riverside Studios

★★★

“a funny and heartwarming production”