Dublin-based company Brokentalkers and Adrienne Tuscott stormed the Edinburgh Fringe and Melbourne’s RISING Festival with Masterclass. Now it’s Sydney’s turn. Self-proclaimed geniuses of the male persuasion might want to duck and cover.

In Brokentalkers’ first Sydney Festival appearance since 2015 (the bruisingly funny Have I No Mouth), Masterclass melds Adrienne Truscott’s comic brilliance with the slippery dramaturgy that is a company trademark in a wickedly funny takedown of the macho artist.

Feidlim Cannon plays a tweedy TV host interviewing a shotgun-toting, dick-swinging playwright (Truscott), for whom “there’s this thing called the truth. It exists and it’s pure and we have to seek it out”. But what of those rumours about his backstage conduct – pure, existing truth too? 

It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. And just when you are getting comfortable with the parody and fake moustache, things take a turn for the meta and real-life rears up to reveal more difficult truths about privilege and power.