Warning: this is not a play for audiences who like genteel entertainment or earnest, chin-scratching theatre.

Played out on a humble, messy set by actors frantically switching costumes on stage, who shout socialist slogans, get splattered with fake blood and howl at the proverbial moon, Werewolf sometimes veers into undergraduate-theatre territory.

This satirical political thriller intentionally embraces chaos because, as it contends, that’s what reigns at the extremes of the ideological left and right. Bringing order to that chaos is Gary Abrahams who, in notable contrast, most recently directed last month’s La bohème for Melbourne Opera.

Eddy Orton and Ben Walter in Werewolf. Photo © Mark Gambino

Written by author, columnist and playwright Van Badham, Werewolf was born out of research for her 2021 book QAnon and On: A Short and Shocking History of Internet Conspiracy Cults. It explores what she describes in the program as the convergence of the ideological and psychological.

Her new play is set in Melbourne, where debate rages about whether fascists due to speak at an event should have their visas revoked. Nathan, the young editor of a radical journal, wants to shut the event down, and...