When there’s a queer arts and culture festival that spreads its tentacles as far as Midsumma, it is simply tradition that one must go fishing for the most obscure, oddball piece of programming to procure a ticket for. Right?

This year, Robert the Octopus has that brief nailed – hook, line, and sinker. It’s a surreal farce that follows one woman’s ill-fated mission to woo a colleague by half-heartedly adopting a pet octopus.

Mich McCowage in Robert the Octopus. Photo @ Darren Gill

Delightfully playful and a smidgen messy (much like the characters we meet), Robert the Octopus is a promising new offering from emerging playwright Alex Duncan (Malthouse Playwright in Residence) brought to life by Melbourne’s award-winning queer physical comedy collective, PO PO MO CO (Stickybeak, Rakali).

This one-act three-hander bobs and floats in a small ocean filled with curious physical comedy, cringe humour, adorably vibrant set dressing, and uncomfortably relatable commentary on dating, pet ownership, and the anxieties of modern social isolation – snagging some hearty laughs along the way.

We meet our high-strung protagonist, Sadie (Mich McCowage), inside her makeshift habitat (also known as her apartment), in a timeless world where people are still reading physical newspapers and and making calls on retro home-phones with curly cords while they dial into remote video meetings from their laptops.

Sadie has an insatiable crush on her boisterous American workmate, Georgia (Hallie Goodman). But how is she to lure the object of her desires into her home? By bringing home an interesting new pet to use as bait, of course.

In spite of some alarm-raisingly needy voicemails left by Sadie on her answering machine, Georgia cannot resist the allure of the tentacled new friend lurking within the frame of Sadie’s Zoom window.

However, poor Sadie is not at all prepared for the possibility that her slimy new companion will become much more interesting to Georgia than she ever could be. Robert (Lily Fish) attempts to help Sadie in her quest for love, but unfortunately, his courtship advice is not very suitable for humans – and the consequences are quite hilarious.

Fish’s peculiar, spandex-clad physical performance is a highlight of the show. (Aside from possessing the perfect surname for an aquatic creature, they’re also the winner of the Best Performer Award at the 2024 Green Room Awards, so the odds are favourable.)

Robert begins as a somewhat catatonic blob, squirming around the stage like a sort of mute, helpless toddler. That is, until he gains the power of speech, his limbs take on grand, swaying motions, and his unearthly intellect becomes apparent (and somewhat threatening).

As the drama builds, the dialogue makes surface-level hints at a deep well of internalised homophobia which Sadie and Georgia both carry. There is something to be said for the plight of a queer woman who becomes romantically obsessed with a supposedly-straight woman; and a supposedly-straight woman who’d rather run off with a literal creature from the deep than entertain the advances of another woman.

However, Robert the Octopus is more concerned with slapstick than excavating the deep trenches of the deeply entrenched heteropatriarchy. (And in fairness, sometimes a little silliness is just what the veterinarian ordered.)

At times, it is hard to know if this production has a firm grip on the romantic comedy tropes it picks up and plays with, or if those tropes are reaching back and not-so-playfully wrestling the show into submission.

But towards the bitter-sweet end, as Sadie and Robert each find their footing in their unconventional odd-couple dynamic, the message at the heart of this show becomes clear: aren’t we all just craving companionship? Someone around whom we can let out the soft, squirmy creature of our soul?

Robert the Octopus played at Next Wave – Brunswick Mechanics Institute from January 29 to February 7.