Two Cents: Dial M for Mushrooms
The banality of murder was briefly interrupted in when, in 2023, a middle-aged woman in a small Victorian town in Australia decided enough was enough vis à vis her in-laws. Genocide, stabbings, even school shootings – this kind of killing is passé in modern times, and entirely gloomy. Death by a deadly mushroom-laced helping of beef Wellington though? Now that’s imagination!
Playing out like some lost episode of Poirot, the devious theatrics of now convicted triple-murderer Erin Patterson made headlines around the world; collectively, the world frothed on its poisons, in podcasts, reels and television shows. Australia’s vaunted writer Helen Garner even co-wrote a book called The Mushroom Tapes, which came out two months after Patterson’s sentencing in November 2025 – right in time for Christmas.
In Adelaide, theatre-making trio George Glass couldn’t resist the allure of this ‘stranger than fiction’ crime story. Coming in hot from its run at Adelaide Fringe, Dial M for Mushrooms is his deranged, camp and occasionally gross-out musical comedy, which fiendishly imagines how the jury came to its final decision. At its core is the valid and lingering question: how did the members agree to convict, when no motive was ever presented at trial?
Mother-to-be Stacey (played in drag), misogynist South African priest Andrew, and bus driver Gavin comprise our purely imaginary jury of three. Squabbling towards unity, they use an increasingly demented logic, strung together through catchy songs and sponsored by Big Mushroom, to arrive at last at a unanimous verdict.
Fringe incubates and allows for scenes that could not be staged elsewhere; that is their scrappy charm. Where else would the performing arts materialise a talking bucket of blood, or a beef Wellington made entirely (and inexplicably) of Mentos? Where too, a jammy song about Buffalo Bill’s love of skin, a macabre talking stick twist, or a magician-like cord of fabric diarrhoea pulled from a pair of white pants? Lurid and bursting with creative props, housed in Erskinville Town Hall’s truly terrible audiovisual capacities, Dial M is one unforgettable fruiting body of this Fringe season.
Dial M For Mushrooms
Erskinville Town Hall
Until 4 September 2026
