Edith Alibec @ Banshee Labyrinth

What will you do tomorrow morning? What’s your IQ? Do you have scoliosis? And what do you fill up your void with? Those are among the questions Edith Alibec might ask you if you enter The Void with her. In her debut clowning show (following a range of theatrical work including one-woman show Tea and Milk in 2023), Alibec appears in a royal purple morph suit with ludicrously long sleeves and a tummy patch that reads ‘THE VOID’. She’ll crawl, leap and bounce around the house asking her audience how they fill the void at the centre of themselves, and she’ll try every suggestion.

The answers given will vary day to day. With The Skinny in the house, they include ‘poetry’, ‘silence’, ‘dancing’, ‘chips’ and ‘hanging out with my pet chickens’. Whatever they are, they’ll elicit improvised and usually audience-collaborative responses from Alibec, hunting for nuggets of profundity in the grand tradition of clowns like Julia Masli. Albec has been a student of Masli’s, and The Void shares much with Masli’s Fringe sensation ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The twist on that format: while Masli attempted to solve the audience’s problems, Alibec’s clown is looking to learn from their solutions to what she sees as the ultimate problem – the void inside all of us. 

Fans of Masli’s show will find a lot to enjoy here, with Alibec hitting a similarly infectious note of childlike wonder, playfulness and delight in the infinite possibilities conjured by any room full of people. There are set pieces too, including a longform sketch as Alibec finds a new boyfriend in the crowd, only to discover that it’s not love, exactly, that will fill the void either. There's also a grand final scene in which Alibec learns to stop worrying and love the void itself. Here, Alibec’s background as a theatremaker comes to the fore for a rousing finale.

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Edith Alibec: The Void, Banshee Labyrinth (Cinema Room), until 30 Aug, 8.55pm, free unticketed, donations on exit