OG Crush continues at Drawing Room at Assembly Rooms until 24 August 2025.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Brave and beautiful.
From the depths of despair to the ecstasy of finding love, Willing lives up to the hype of having-sold out performances as part of Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival.
The piece focuses on his life experiences and how having had disappointing attempts at relationships and what can kindly be called a ‘varied’ career, he turns his hand to creating memes online. In addition, he makes it a policy to respond to every message. The provocative memes he creates lead to some spirited responses and one in particular takes his attention.
Charting his relationships and his own self sabotage, he aims to examine what is the very nature of love and what goes wrong. His experiences are not just recounted, they seem to be re-experienced.
The songs are gorgeous – the balance between his voice and the backing track is handled well. Alongside his poems there is a lot to enjoy in the way he uses language. Not to mention a fair amount of education for those not accustomed to queer terminology!
There is an elegant ease in his performance style, working his space and the room really well. As he says: “I know how to tell a story.” He certainly does.
Fiona Orr
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