Two Cents: Caught In Between (Sydney Fringe)
A combination padlock. A pair of red-rimmed glasses. A SIM card. A very cute mug.
Each of these items first appears in the hands of an audience member in Danielle Lim’s immersive and inventive autobiographical show. She’s gathered us all into her consciousness, assigning us the role of both active participants and welcome witnesses, as she travels back in time to answer the seemingly irresolvable questions which have followed her all her hyphenated ‘Asian-Australian’ life. Who is she? Where does she fit in?
When placed in her hands, these four items become powerful totems, transporting her stage persona back to a core memory. These memories materialise behind her across two screens which mirror each other at the centre. Appearing sometimes like home videos, sometimes like uneasy hauntings that warp and ripple, they lead us dream-like through the streets and schoolyards of Malaysia and Australia.
Our guide in this perilous two-world quest is ‘SD’, a bright, chirpy and capricious entity (Cheryl Ho), who declares herself to be the disembodied voice of Lim’s collective experiences. Although her dialogue with Lim releases some of the show’s main tension and humour, SD can be a bitch: she knows all her insecurities after all. She will goad, needle and pick at Lim’s recollections of childhood bullying, body-shaming, and loneliness, leaning into her wounds of unbelonging. A shapeshifter, she also code-switches like Lim has learnt to do, altering her behaviours and speech depending on the environment. During one traumatic memory of racist partner abuse though, SD goes quiet.
Lim is a warm, engaging and confident stage presence, and her show entertains significant preoccupations of the modern migrant experience: the treacherous promises and imperatives of ‘integration’ into a new culture, particularly one of a colonial nation; the sense of incohesion or incompleteness of self as measured against local norms; the complex loyalty to two very different places, each with their unique benefits and flaws; not knowing whether parts of an identity have been tragically forgotten, or were never even there.
Debuting in Sydney after an award-winning Adelaide Fringe run last year, Caught In Between uses creative modes of storytelling to relay an experience of cultural dislocation, identity turmoil, and a tender path to self-acceptance. A personal migration tale, crafted and shared after a decade of hard-won learning, it’s worth an hour of your evening this final week of Fringe.
Caught In Between
By Danielle Lim
Sydney Fringe
Erskineville Town Hall
Until 27 September 2025
