In our post-pandemic world of cost of living crisis and soaring housing prices, building a dream house seems out of reach to most young people. 5Bells Collective takes a sarcastic snapshot to tackle the idea of the elusive dream home in their fresh new play.

Playing at the Meat Market as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, written by long-term collaborating power trio Josh Higgins, Jacques Cooney Adlard and Alexi O’Keefe, New Home is an engrossing exploration into what is a home? More importantly, how is the idea of home influenced by constant media scrutiny?

New Home centres around a young working-professional couple—Peter Bread (Dan Fonn Prichard) and Christina Baker-Bread (Janine Kwok)—entering a home-building show to build their dream home after receiving inheritance from Christina’s recently deceased mother. Across the next hour, we see the Breads try to build their different visions of home with the help of their designer friend Gideon Upton (Meg Punzet). Peter’s vision is the state-of-the-art designer house; and Christina’s is a place preserving the memory of her late mother. Amid their hopes, trials and heartbreaks, is the constantly looming presence of the show host Keira McGlashan (Eleanor Golding) and Cameraperson (Claudia Scott), capturing everything into public spectacle.

Walking into the theatre, the first thing I saw was the minimalist set. A makeshift living room built from boxes was cleverly crafted, worlds away from the designer house. In the prime centre, the one real piece of furniture, was the TV, symbolic of our constantly surveillanced lives. Although, the positioning meant the TV is sometimes obstructed by the cast when moving in front of it. This can be avoided with a simple fix of having the TV a bit higher so it is physically looming over the heads of the characters—reinforcing the power balance and likening it to a surveillance camera.        

As an original student-play in a premiering performance, it is so rare to see a script that is so well-written. The script was snappy and spell-binding; not a moment felt enervating or out of place and the show had the audience on edge the whole 60 minutes.   

This was elevated by the stellar performances of a truly talented cast, whose strength lay in their ability to embody their characters to peak perfection—from mannerisms to personality to vocal character. Prichard’s portrayal of Peter was certainly the highlight. From his exaggerated fury at having no hot tub, to his stubborn insistence to finish building a dream house no matter the cost, to his obsession with spitting stats and figures, Prichard created a well-crafted comic figure that audiences love to hate. Throughout the show we see Peter become more and more unhinged as the construction project consumes him, until by the end of the play where he moves around like a zombie.

Another standout performance is Golding who inhabits the character of show host Keira so aptly. The broadcaster's voice is perfect and the unfazed plastic-vacant face of media personalities feels chillingly real.  

Punzet’s character had some of the best catch-lines. “I won’t screw over my fellow mammal like that, mammals for life!” is my favourite from the show. Punzet brings a vibrant energy to Gideon, the unfailing loyal but unappreciated friend who tries to make real Bread’s unrealistic plans at exclusive “mate’s rates.”    

Kwok presented a more subtle, though no less poignant performance of the meditative wife. If anything, Kwok’s more realistic acting sets a nice contrast against the highly dramatic mannerisms of Prichard and the rest of the cast. One of my favourite scenes in the show is of Christina reading her mother’s diary who cautioned, “don’t build your house out of bricks, they can’t comfort you, they just sit there and wait for you to die.” That scene captured the entire essence of the play. Wrapping Peter’s hilarious fits and Keira's chilling presence into a neat bow that ultimately asked the question: have we had the wrong perception of a dream home all along? That being said, I would have enjoyed seeing stronger character development for Christina, as her character seems sidelined against Peter’s larger-than-life ambitions, and the toll her husband’s ambitions had on her across the play. 

Directions by Josh Higgins, was also powerfully considered. The alternation between more serious scenes with interspersed sitcom sequences of “The New Home Show” were seamless. However, at times with Prichard’s character already naturally depicted as very dramatic, the exaggerated mannerisms did not contrast too well against the sitcom.

5Bells Collective’s New Home is a delightful new play that fuses comedy with important meditations on how to measure the value of a home. A topic all too relevant when for most young people today, a dream home is just a pipedream. Instead New Home reminds us that home is not just a house, the physical box, but what we bring in, the memories, the people, the connections, that turns a house into a home.