WHALE is a love story. It is also a personal story, a political story, a sometimes funny story, and an ambitious piece of theatre. Courtney McManus has crafted a solo show that manages to simultaneously destabilise, uplift, and invite you to think critically about body politics and fatphobia.

Courtney is a talented performer and speaker with a disarming and self-assured presence that had the entire audience silently riveted for the length of the show. It was a special one too: this performance took place space inside WA Museum Boola Bardip’s Hackett Hall, beneath the famous floating blue whale skeleton. It is this skeleton that features in one of the narrative’s opening scenes, kicking off Courtney’s profound retelling of her memories of fatphobic discrimination. It is not insignificant that this is being shown in a room full of history. The whale hangs above the stage throughout the show like a beautiful, complicated reminder of how moments from the past can come to take on new meaning as memory compounds over time.

The sound design here plays a crucial role in the storytelling and is absolutely brilliantly executed. The sound production has clearly been crafted with the same level of care as the rest of the script and successfully pulls together the structure of the show. Voiceover, sound effects, music, and ambient sound are utilised throughout to demarcate time and place in a sparsely decorated set, and to the writer’s and director’s credit this is all that is needed.

There is true vulnerability and pain in this show, but there is also love and queer joy here. This is intimate, progressive, and important theatre. If you are looking to expand and ground your understanding of anti-fat bias or looking to begin examining what it means to engage with queer, fat justice on the level of lived experience in Australia, WHALE is for you.