This Bitter Earth

“I’m just saying, a little lube goes a long way.”

Being a twenty-something is hard. Being a twenty-something queer is… something else, I guess.

Dating apps, dick pics and capitalist nightmares. A hostile rental market, un-safe schools and a semi-constant state of existential terror. Look, we’ve only got 12 years until climate catastrophe and we’re all going to low-key high-key die alone, might as well flail around in a spin class and buy a reusable straw, right?

Fresh off a critically acclaimed hit season in Sydney, This Bitter Earth comes from a pair of exciting new queer voices in writer Chris Edwards and director Riley Spadaro. Here, they bring a sharp new play that delves into what it means to be young, hot and a bit sad.

An unstitched patchwork of queer lives in queer times, This Bitter Earth looks at how we fight, bitch, love, confront despair and try to connect, all through the mess and the muck and the might of everyday queer existence.

It’s an anthology of millennial crises, from drunken wine nights in dirty hostels to cooked confessions in club-adjacent alleyways. It’s vicious, it’s tender, it hates being touched but it kinda needs a hug.

And it’s gay.

Really gay.