Cover Image: Rose Kingdom-Barron in ‘The Wetness’, presented by Mummy’s Plastic and Fringe World 2026. Photo by Jason Matz.

The Wetness, by Mummy’s Plastic
Fringe World Festival 2026

Do you ever feel personally targeted by a water bottle slogan or threatened by a duck meme encouraging you to stay hydrated? What you need is a tongue-in-cheek spiritual awakening centred on the substance that makes up 75% of your body. 

After a successful season at the Blue Room Theatre in 2025, The Wetness has slipped into the 2026 Fringe World program in the form of a midnight mass.  

Mustered into The Gold Digger tent by the ushers’ brisk authority, we were blessed with gentle misting from spray bottles by two acolytes. Their movements slow and fluid, as though the air itself was viscous.

The lights dim as we are showered with Lia T’s sound design of rainfall and thunderclaps, echoed with flickering white light. Designer Jack Caddy, performing one of the two Aquatic Acolytes alongside Hardil Singh, illuminates the theatricality of the show with LED-lit water bottles that shimmer aqua-green. The melodrama continues to grow as Caddy and Singh wheel out a giant clamshell.

Emerging from the clamshell with excessively long wavy red hair and soft, pouty lips, is our Wetness Practitioner, Rose Kingdom-Barron (KB). Her Zoolander-flavoured Botticelli Birth of Venus entrance is completed with Caddy wielding a leaf blower to provide the perfect windswept look. 

KB proceeds to lead us through a sermon and series of ceremonial acts that become increasingly slippery and silly, telling the story of wetness. She speaks of “the first thirst” and guides us through chants that hopefully leave us a little less “ice-olated”.

The distribution of water throughout the performance is inventive, theatrical and ridiculously silly all at once. At one point, a giant cocktail glass serves as a chalice for the ceremony, and a bag of ice is ritualistically slit open and poured in. The absurdity continues with a mischievous burst of water from an extravagant gown Muriel Heslop could only dream of. 

KB’s ability to coax us into participating in silly small acts is extraordinarily skilful. Her wholehearted ridiculousness, shared by the acolytes, enables us to eagerly lean in to catch water, chant, rub ice and join a choir of gargled singing. Her gentle yet witty approach disarms us completely and we become willing followers in this late-night celebration of wetness. 

This show is the epitome of unhinged Fringe experiences, successfully cultivating a cult following.

The Wetness, presented by Mummy’s Plastic and Fringe World will perform 6-7 and 13-14 February in The Gold Digger at The Pleasure Garden, Russel Square, Northbridge.

For more information, visit: The Wetness | FRINGE WORLD – 21 January – 15 February 2026