A few weeks ago, a distraught divorcee wrote to the Guardian advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. His problem? He had fallen for a “thoughtful, empathetic, soft, genuine, intuitive, honest” woman who also happened to vehemently believe that the planet Earth was flat.

“I seriously care for her,” he wrote, “but I also am struggling with respecting anyone who believes such a nonsense conspiracy theory they learned about on YouTube. Please help!”

That same conundrum (and others) is explored in this new Australian musical Flat Earthers, a playful, queer-lensed show with a book by Jean Tong and Lou Walls and songs by Walls and James Gales that’s much more optimistic than the Guardian‘s agony aunt when it comes to our ability to embrace the nonsensical beliefs of others.

Shannen Alyce Quan and Manali Datar in Flat Earthers: The Musical. Photo © John McRae

Ria (Shannen Alyce Quan) and Heather (Milo Hartill) are the public faces of The Debunkers, a popular YouTube channel devoted to busting myths and conspiracy theories. Their identities (and income streams) are intimately bound up with calling out the phonies and the whackos. The merely misguided, who have fallen into...