The Almost Collective’s sharp comedy where spies, spectacle and distraction collide inside a theme park hurtling towards chaos, satire and revelation. Alicia Patrick reviews Ride or Die.
Reviews/Theatre
SATIRICAL THRILL RIDE ASKS WHAT WE MISS WHILE WE ARE DISTRACTED
2 July 2026
- Reading time • 6 minutesTheatre
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Cover Image: Irreverent comedy Ride or Die by The Almost Collective. Image by Ethan Jackson.
Ride or Die
June 28
The Blue Room Theatre
Ride or Die is an irreverent comedy presented by The Almost Collective and The Blue Room Theatre. Perfectly witty and satirical, the show aims to answer the question: are we all using entertainment as distraction? And what are we distracted from?
Founded by creatives Anja Starkiss and Jaimee Whirledge, The Almost Collective frequently collaborates with other artists to produce works driven by curiosity. While The Almost Collective is relatively new, its members are far from inexperienced.
Whirledge and Starkiss are WAAPA-trained artists with several successful shows under their belts (All The Times I Could Have). When creating Ride or Die, their second work together, the group collaborated with The Blue Room Theatre and was mentored by The Last Great Hunt core artist Arielle Gray.
Ride or Die follows agents Ferris Wheel and Carol Cell as they attempt to find and defuse a bomb on the opening day of brand-new amusement park Venture Land. While Agent Cell, played by Almost Collective co-founder Jaimee Whirledge, is distracted by everything the theme park has to offer, Agent Wheel, played by Katie Walsh (also the costume designer for the show), is focused on trying to catch the culprit. Both spies become increasingly caught up, seemingly forgetting why they have been sent by S.T.U.P.I.D. in the first place, until it is too late.
In 60 minutes, the staff of Venture Land take you through all the best parts of a theme park: waiting in line for ages, children’s laughter, the bomb about to detonate and kill us all, and, of course, the rides. The theme park is brought to life by Megan Mak’s minimal but immersive set design.
Most notably, a delightful under-the-sea-themed ride is brought to life through adorable paintings of sea creatures, while a space-themed ride is created through similar paintings of our galaxy. While lacking in some portions of the show, such as an overly minimal river cruise, the set design, paired with Jolene Whibley’s lighting design and Lachlan Ives’ perfectly subtle sound design, creates a playful space in which the audience and performers can both have fun.
A real rollercoaster ride from start to finish. Image by Ethan Jackson.
The show is jam-packed with so many jokes, innuendoes and criticisms that you would be forgiven for missing some. By covering so many topics in such a short period, at such a fast pace, the show attempts to replicate real life, in which the masses focus on one thing only to quickly drop it and move on to the next. The defining moment of the play comes when we realise it is actually Agent Wheel who is truly distracted and ultimately causes the demise of the two agents. In her desperation to find someone to blame, she neglects to solve the original and only true problem: defuse the bomb.
Ride or Die forces its audience to ask: are we all so distracted trying to find the bad guys that we forget about the problems themselves? And if so, how long do we have before our bomb goes off?
To see more of The Almost Collective work you can follow them on Instagram
Alicia Patrick is part of the 2026 Emerging Youth Writers Lab cohort, led by Rosalind Appleby.
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