Written by Matthew MacVarish

Directed by Patrick Sandford

Review by Dominic Corr

Perth Theatre

Tower blocks frequently serve as tired theatrical shorthand for urban despair, yet in Matthew McVarish’s sharply observed solo piece, the concrete corridors of a twenty-storey high-rise become a profoundly unexpected canvas for quiet realisations. Returning to the stage for its first major revival since a heavily celebrated 2012 premiere at A Play, a Pie, and a Pint, this 2026 Perth Theatre production meticulously excavates the fierce humour and crushing loneliness of a woman desperately holding everyone else’s world together while her own quietly disintegrates, quickly becoming the most successful production to appear on Perth’s stage this year.

The narrative orbits Alanah, a fiercely bright university dropout who surrendered her academic ambitions to finance a partner’s dreams, only for the marriage to abruptly evaporate after a mere three months of alleged wedded happiness. Now marooned in a monolithic housing estate, she weaponises her perpetual vigour, distracting herself from her own stagnation by relentlessly micromanaging the chaos of others. Whether she is wrangling the demands of her neurotic, bride-to-be best friend Zoe, running errands for an isolated Polish neighbour upstairs, or supporting vulnerable young women at a local drop-in clinic, Alanah is the quintessential architect of everyone’s salvation but her own. There are few, if any, who won’t recognise an aspect of themselves in Julie Cullen’s heartfelt and evocative performance amidst this urban greyscale; a much-needed light to aspire to in everyday humdrum.

Directing Remember you are beauty full, Patrick Sandford crafts a nimble, episodic structure that charts this journey through a series of sharp, bite-sized vignettes; each threaded by in equal parts tender, if unnerving, graffiti messages left for Alana each morning. Sandford keeps the physical momentum high, though this rapid-fire pacing occasionally blunts the necessary stillness required for the script’s most devastating psychological revelations. Furthermore, while Colin Ross Waterson’s spry musical score mirrors Alanah’s relentless, manufactured optimism, its buoyancy sometimes actively fights against the profound, suffocating grief bubbling just beneath the surface of her frantic altruism.

Anchoring this precarious tonal tightrope is a truly tectonic, emotionally porous central performance. From the very second she hurtles dynamically through Emily Jame’s deftly created set, emerging from the back of the auditorium, Cullen dictates the atmosphere and pacing, wielding a kinetic, larger-than-life magnetism that belies Alannah’s diminutive self-esteem. She expertly navigates the script’s pendulum swings between razor-sharp, observational comedy and raw, unguarded vulnerability. Cullen possesses a stage presence so expansive it effortlessly dwarfs James’s imposing, brutalist high-rise backdrop, vividly populating the space with a rich, invisible ensemble of clients and companions.

The catalyst for her quiet metamorphosis arrives via a string of inexplicable, flattering graffiti sprayed beside the communal lift. This anonymous street poetry, curiously echoing phrases uttered by figures from Alanah’s own life, acts as a desperately needed lifeline, forcing her to confront her own neglected worth. While the central mystery of the vandal’s identity might skirt dangerously close to saccharine sentimentality for the more cynical ticketholder, the sheer, unapologetic sincerity of McVarish’s writing prevents the life-affirming climax from ever feeling unearned.

Remember you are beauty full stands as a superbly raw, fiercely humorous love letter to the quiet heroism of survival. Rather than tying every narrative thread into a neatly manufactured fairy-tale resolution, the production leaves us standing beside its heroine in the fluorescent hum of a brutalist corridor, staring at the concrete, finally learning how to read the writing on the wall.

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