Our city is briefly awash in performance art! I arrived at the Bell Brothers Building with time to spare and cider to drink. I mean, the show isn't actually BYO, but it never hurts to try at these things...

Overexposed and the Anywhere Theatre Festival are a perfect match - like love and marriage, horse and carriage, or "quirky one-woman cabaret" and gently experimental community festivals. If you're on the fence, just buy a ticket. This is beautiful, imperfect, endearing theatre in a (literal) Brisbane niche. It's also confusing.

Co-producer/director Daria Wain transports her audience to some deeply familiar terrain with this piece: romantic comedy, New York flavour. Thursday Next (performed solidly by Laura Gant) is a successful young lady-about-town. She is wise in the ways of dating, though regrettably single despite a list of former trysts from here to the nearest Starbucks. I imagine she works in public relations. She probably has a cat. But Overexposed isn't really about Thursday Next; it's a show about nothing.

No - sorry - I meant the other New York comedy. It's a show about sex and the city. Small details shine through the convoluted and somewhat unnecessary plot devices, helping us all believe (just for a moment) that we too inhabit the world of sophisticated dating (sophistidating). It's a winning formula when it works, and on the whole it does. You just need to lean back and enjoy the ride.

Film, live music and some tender audience participation break up Laura's central performance. These small interludes keep the night galloping along nicely, but also raise more questions than they answer: Who is that man with the guitar? Is Thursday an actual agony aunt, or what? Are we supposed to call out? Nobody knows. The confessional aspects can be similarly unclear, treading a deliberately awkward line between fact and fiction, comedy and tragedy.

Still, combined with free lollipops (the best kind), jokey audience surveys, and an experimental seating arrangement, the entire experience is brimming with ideas. It may be less than the sum of its parts, but that really doesn't matter when those parts are so interesting. Despite (or perhaps because of) some awkward execution, Overexposed successfully transforms the already beautiful Bell Brothers foyer. It is a curious experiment.

Tickets available through anywherefest.com until Sunday 19th May.

Rekorderlig Apple and Blackcurrant: N/A

Photo Credits: Evan Tantum & Stuart Hirth.