Trigger Warning: This review discusses instances of child abuse that occur as one of the prominent themes within the show.
KXT on Broadway was a tightly packed venue last night. The opening night of Wally had drawn enough people to set the audience shoulder to shoulder, and after a brisk 90 minute run, it was clear to see why.
This show is densely layered, built like an intricate piece of clockwork, while its core is something beyond dark—utterly gruesome—but making for some excellent theatre all the same.

The show’s premise starts out fairly simply. A regional news house is turned upside down when the perfect storm of an old cold case, workplace harassment, and gut-wrenching instances of child abuse culminate together among the staff.
As director, Amelia Gilday has excelled in bringing this incredibly harrowing story about a missing boy and an altogether terrifying conspiracy to life. The sound design here is superb, with genuine spine tingling moments evoked by the ominous drones and ambient music, while the lighting, oftentimes playing on greens and reds, colours some of the show’s most dramatic moments in unforgettable ways.
I won’t be able to highlight many specific moments where actors shone in this one, as, regrettably, some of the best scenes hold far too many spoilers for this review, but suffice to say that every single person is on their a-game, including the playwright behind this whole show, Nick Vagne, who had about two days to fill in for a sick colleague and did an exceptional job.
Every character has at least a small dose of suffering in this show, and no one passes up the opportunity to truly shine and showcase some human, visceral reactions.
I hope I’ve given the impression so far that this is, in essence, an incredibly dark and serious show. The topic of child abuse comes up fairly frequently, and the excellent cast here does a great job bringing the perpetrators and victims of this abuse into a startlingly grounded view - but something as serious as the topics at hand in Wally need a delicate touch.
Missing the mark with humour in a show like this is not surprising, considering how stark any kind of jokes would appear compared to the story, but it’s still such a shame that Wally’s attempts at levity are among the few things that hold this show back.
Towards the beginning of the show, some coworker banter kicks off after a stormy night getting coverage—and it’s great. The characters in this scene, played by Andrew Badger, Iley Jones, and Lana Filies, have some great comedic timing with one another, and their dialogue also establishes some pretty important concepts about the relationship dynamics at work.
This scene is followed by one of the best in the show, where Sam (Andrew Badgers), the perpetually put upon intern, is the first to discover instances of child abuse sitting on a company hard drive. The play’s opening has already telegraphed what is waiting for Sam on this laptop, but the ominous music and fantastic play on light and shadow make this scene nail-bitingly tense. It’s one of the best uses of dramatic irony I’ve seen in a while.
This laptop scene should have really been the end of those lighthearted moments in the show. The veneer of camaraderie is gone, and something awful is happening in this work place. Wally, however, continues to have comically long silences or sitcom-esque punchlines and quips, even during some harrowing scenes, that left the audience a bit confused as to what was a laugh moment, what was a character using humour as a mask, and what was a line meant to be played straight.
The set design is purposefully minimalist, and it’s truly a wonder what this show manages to do with a table, two chairs, and so few props they can all be stored inside said table. It really shows that the magnetism and intensity of the show is purely carried by the players and their handling of the story.
There were some questionable design choices, however, mostly with the choice to have a projector establishing the setting of most scenes not in the news house. Two characters are sitting at a grave at one point, and a clip-art grave, the kind you’d see in primary school, is projected onto the wall. Any stock image of an actual graveyard would have given the same impress without detracting from the weight of the scene.
Similarly, the recurring motif of a wombat wandering around the office is usually signified by fading wombat prints teeming up and down the walls—beautiful! Perfect! They sometimes swap this out to a clipart image of a wombat bouncing around the wall idly like a DVD screen saver, which again, is just that little thing that can take you out of a show with incredibly serious content matter.
For all I know, these could be a sign of opening night hiccups, and the comedic moments will be played more transparently on subsequent nights, with the strange clipart graphics replaced by something more appropriate to the tone. In any case, these are relatively minor marks against a show that is a layered and intricate tapestry of depravity and emotion.
Get out to KXT, because this show is absolutely worth a watch - and make sure to pay attention to every piece of dialogue, almost every line is a minute detail in this unfolding mystery
