The great strength of the Melbourne Fringe Festival is in giving performance space to new untried works. It is difficult to imagine a play like Comfort Zone gaining a season, let alone an appreciative audience, at another time.

Don’t expect gay soapbox theatre from these playwrights. Comfort Zone is rampantly heterosexual and that’s one of its strengths. It comes across as a bitter drag queen take on the whole incestuous theatre world. Double-ended dildos in the filing cabinet, ejaculate dressing on hot dogs, weak bladders, post coital cigarettes every 5 min.

The humour is pitch black and if you needed an argument for ‘gay sensitivity’ in the arts, here it is.

All the performers have a ball, hamming up their respective roles. Alexis Beebe as Deirdre James is a stand out, playing the over sexed artistic director like a frisky she goat in pursuit of a horny mate. As the struggling playwright, Izeqiel McCoy definitely has the X factor.

In Comfort Zone, Cosmic Players have delivered a rare gem in the hit and miss festival game – a piece of new theatre that is hilariously self referential and thematically bold.

Hotel Bedford
1 Flemington Rd, North Melbourne
Until Oct 9