REVIEW: Double Take, Adelaide Fringe 2026 ★★★★★

There is something special about a daytime fringe show that leaves you lighter than when you walked in. Performed by Kristin McCarthy Parker and Julia Cavagna, Double Take is a tightly attuned mime duet that finds depth in the smallest gestures.

The mime here is consistently impressive, with a level of clarity that makes every movement legible. Every character, every object, every intention is clear – rain exists only in the suggestion of damp lashes, a new set of lingerie is conjured through a few careful movements. 

Double Take moves fluidly between memory, domestic routine, gentle fantasy, and moments of emotional reflection, finding theatrical weight in the minutiae of everyday life. Built on precision and a shared rhythm between the performers, the show remains light in tone for much of its running time before arriving at a poignant emotional turn near the end. The delicate snail hand puppet which reappears across the performance adds a thread of whimsy that connects the otherwise self-contained scenes.

As a duo, McCarthy Parker and Cavagna are a joy to watch. Their complicité is unmistakable throughout, though this is especially clear during ‘The Brass Section,’ where their tight synchronicity is laid bare. Unlike other scenes, this scene’s soundscape offers no obvious cues, so it is clear that the rhythm exists entirely between the pair.

One of the show’s lighter vignettes transforms a simple retail interaction into full-blown epic fantasy: a worker disappears into the stockroom to fetch another size, and suddenly we’re watching an epic quest unfold, the back room becoming a mythic landscape. I had flashbacks to being seventeen, working in a shoe shop, once trapped beneath a collapsing wall of Nikes while searching for a customer’s size, only to return and find they’d disappeared. This scene nails that specific retail purgatory: “I’ll just check out the back” as a perilous odyssey from which you may not return. The comedy of this scene lands because the performers’ physical detail is considered, so every invisible obstacle feels real.

The penultimate scene, ‘Recollect’, lands with real weight. After so much gentle smiling, the emotional shift hits hard. For anyone touched by dementia, the scene may feel particularly close to home. It certainly did for me. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house – I can confirm mine weren’t.

What Double Take does beautifully is honour the small things. Through precision and shared rhythm, it elevates the minutiae of everyday life into something quietly theatrical.

Recommended Drink: An elderflower spritz. Delicate, floral, at once complex and light – and arguably appropriate at 3:30pm.

Performances of Double Take have now concluded at Adelaide Fringe 2026.