Review: No One Gets Out of Here Alive
The Farm, Brisbane Festival
Thomas Dixon Centre, 9–12 September 2026
Review by Caitlin Halmarick
The Farm, known for its norm-defying dance theatre works, has presented its latest full-length work at Brisbane Festival. No One Gets Out of Here Alive is a compilation of scenes where the bodies onstage process the grief of death: the death of loved ones, the death of dreams and desires, and the death of themselves.
Dance theatre is the perfect form for this journey. The body holds the processing of grief, and for an hour we live through the bodies on stage, a conduit for us to process our own grief.
Performed at the opulent and polished Thomas Dixon Centre, the space is not quite the right match for a work that demands intimacy, grit, and the messy business of being human. The Brisbane Powerhouse might have been a better match for its Brisbane Festival season. Somewhere dark and grungy, with just the right amount of cool to match the performance.
As we gather into the theatre, so too does the cast on stage. We are all coming together to meet at the casket in the left downstage corner. As the performance commences, director Gavin Webber announces that, unfortunately, a core member of the cast, Kayah Guenther, is unwell and unable to perform that evening. The cast does not falter in their performance, but I do wish to see the show with the heart and presence that Kayah brings to every stage he graces.
The dancing begins in earnest with a spellbinding solo by Erin O’Rourke. She is the embodiment of grief, wracking her body in a way that is so viscerally transmutable that you feel her pain. The scene continues with each character expressing grief in their own human ways. Personalities often found at a family funeral play out, and the scene feels all too familiar to those who have experienced the death of a family member.
We are so caught up in these characters’ experience of the death of another and the physical actions that need to be taken when caring for the dead (eating, wiping tears, preparing the grave) that it comes as quite a shock when dirt falls from on high and all of a sudden the characters shift from grieving the death of a loved one to experiencing death themselves. In a mesmerising dance, clothes are gradually stripped until the dancers are representations of what we truly are: soft bodies writhing in the dirt.
Erin O’Rourke is the only dancer who remains separate. In what is a perfect non-verbal communication of shock and horror, she is not able to process what is happening in front of her until she too is consumed by the writhing bodies and by death.
The curtain closes. But Grayson Millwood shows us that we still need to tidy up. Armed with a broomstick, he sweeps the front of the stage of the dirt that consumed. Enzo Nazario follows in a cheeky solo, playing with the audience by dangerously dangling his limbs over the edge of the stage. He invites us back inside the curtain, where there is now a veil. Are we behind the veil of death?
What follows is a celebration of life with occasional bouts of grief. Grief can hit even as life goes on. Before long, Death joins the party. Death greets each person and lays them to rest. The best thing we can do is dance with life before death dances with us.
Then, in an act of democratising this experience, the veil is pulled over the audience. No one gets out of here alive.
As the house lights come on, we are invited to stay in the theatre to process this experience of grief for as long as we would like. We are also provided with various hotlines, including Lifeline, Beyond Blue, and 13YARN. An appropriate recognition of the heavy themes that the work explores.
No One Gets Out of Here Alive has a well-gelled cast, but as is often the case in project-based work, it could have used more time for the scenes to marinate in the collective. Fantastic as the work is, it could have only gotten better with more time and funding. I fully expect the work to feel more human, cohesive, and lived-in as the premiere seasons of the show progress.
The Farm has done it again. They have produced a visceral, virtuosic dance theatre work that speaks to the anxieties of today.