“Hi, everyone, I’m Lally Katz. I’m a playwright and I wrote this play,” the writer tells us with a bright smile, breaking the fourth wall as soon as her boyfriend Dave (Matthew Whittet) falls asleep. Lally, played by Amber McMahon, is at the centre of Atlantis, Lally Katz’s brand new semi-autobiographical ‘road movie’ play at Belvoir St Theatre.

While not quite a sequel to Katz’s one-woman show Stories I Want to Tell You, which played at Belvoir in 2013, Atlantis uses elements of Katz’s life as a jumping off point: a psychic-diagnosed vaginal curse – more seriously manifesting itself as a twisted ovary – ups the stakes for the 35-year-old writer, who is presented with a shrinking window in which she might be able to become pregnant. The news sparks a frenetic, almost mythological, trip to the USA where she hopes to find a soul mate with whom to have children.

^{Amber McMahon and Matthew Whittet in Atlantis at Belvoir St Theatre. Photos © Daniel Boud}

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