This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes a four-star performance by music producer Fred Again at the Rod Laver Arena, and an absurd black comedy at fortyfive downstairs with quicksilver performances.

MUSIC
Fred Again ★★★★
Rod Laver Arena, March 4

The confetti from Taylor Swift’s final Australian show in Sydney was probably still airborne when British producer Fred Again touched down in secret last week. While one is the most famous person on the planet, and the other was born Frederick John Philip Gibson, it’s easier to correlate the two than local passport stamps.

Both are current titans of industry who have fostered a cult of personality with their fans. Swift’s can be traced to the meta-commentary cleverly woven into her songs; Fred Again’s stems largely from his perpetually grinning, perennially online life.

That’s where, last Tuesday, he announced a pop-up show at the Sydney Opera House for the same night: 125,000 people tried to buy 2250 tickets. It’s where he sources snatches of sound to work into songs, posts demos asking fans for feedback, and can announce an arena tour of Australia just one week before packing Rod Laver for three nights. There’s a reason the mammoth video screens at his impressive live shows are vertical: the Fred Again experience is as much an invitation into his online world writ large as it is to document it all over again.

Tonight they do in droves. From the moment an appreciative Gibson appears alongside his brother Tony on the bare stage, phones are out to receive an arena going bonkers – Monday be damned. Opening with the slow ache of Kyle (i found you), Gibson’s surprisingly lovely vocals on Bleu (better with time), and a remix of hyper new single stayinit, the early set detonates into a bass-heavy rave when he runs through the crowd to stand on a mini-stage under a lowered, glowing ceiling, and frantically mash the pads of his MPC into, Jungle.

When Gibson brings out “best friend” Hen from support act Joy (Anonymous) to sing, “a brand new song we finished five days ago,” the audience already knows the lyrics. When he drops Marea (we’ve lost dancing) near the set’s end, the video footage is of a fan dancing in the crowd only last Saturday, during his surprise pop-up set at Port Melbourne’s Timber Yard. When the show finishes, it’s the audience on the big screens hugging to Delilah (pull me out of this). Like Swift before him, it doesn’t really matter what songs Gibson plays – his knack is being a talisman for the big emotions of his community. Tonight it repays him with joy.
Reviewed by Marcus Teague

THEATRE
Milked ★★★★
fortyfive downstairs, until March 10