Elbow Room have built a reputation for work that unsettles as much as it entertains. SAINTS, Marcel Dorney’s new play at the La Mama Courthouse Theatre, feels like a confident distillation of everything the company does best.
Set in revolutionary England in 1654, SAINTS takes us into a world where the monarchy has fallen, the “Parliament of Saints” rules, and certainty is a dangerous drug. Witches, prophets and spies roam freely, and truth is whatever best serves power.
At the centre of this maelstrom is Anna Trapnel, a real historical figure reimagined here with gleeful invention. A Baptist visionary whose ecstatic trances and prophecies once terrified Cromwell himself, Trapnel becomes both anchor and accelerant, a woman whose prophecies have come true, and who must now live with the consequences.
Dorney’s script is pleasingly satirical, refusing easy moral positions. Saints and villains change masks in a blur, and the play’s central question – how do we know we’re on the right side of history? – lands with particular force in a moment when righteousness is often loudly declared and rarely examined. We are told that the strangest parts are true, and the play delights in making that distinction feel increasingly irrelevant.
The ensemble cast clearly relish the material. Niamh Corcoran, Briony Farrell, Zak Giles Pidd, Molly Holohan, Carissa Lee, Cait Spiker and Emily Tomlins (who also co-directs) move fluidly through Dorney’s shifting tones, embracing the absurdity while grounding the work emotionally. There is a sense of collective playfulness here, matched by discipline and precision – an ensemble trusting the text and each other enough to let the ideas breathe.
The production design is striking without being showy. Rachel Nankin’s set, Miki Looker’s costumes and Kris Chainey’s lighting work in concert to conjure a world that feels both historical and eerily stylised. The use of the seating bank allows the work to operate on multiple levels: lines of candles evoke an old-world atmosphere, while a centrally positioned screen flashes historical and contextual anecdotes.
Chris Wenn’s sound design, alongside compositions by Zak Giles Pidd and Marcel Dorney, underscores both the unease and momentum of the piece, while dramaturg Brigid Gallacher’s influence is evident in the clarity of its structure and intent.
Staged in the La Mama Courthouse Theatre, SAINTS gains an added layer of resonance. It is hard to ignore the echoes of punitive justice and historical injustices once enacted within these walls, as the play interrogates systems that declare themselves righteous while committing quiet, and not-so-quiet, atrocities. The building itself becomes an unspoken collaborator in the work.
SAINTS is thoughtful, irreverent, and unsettling in all the right ways. Elbow Room have once again proven that theatre can be intellectually rigorous without losing its sense of mischief, and that history, when handled with wit and care, can feel urgent and uncomfortably alive.
SAINTS
La Mama Courthouse, 349 Drummond Street, Carlton
Performance: Saturday 7 February 2026
Season continues to 27 February 2026
Information and Bookings: www.lamama.com.au
Images: SAINTS – photos by Darren Gill
Review: Rohan Shearn