Pay No Attention,
Flying Fruit Fly Circus
Director: Anni Davey OAM
Sydney Opera House Studio
4 July 4 – 11 July, 2026
Pay No Attention is a lively new production by the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, a troupe of alarmingly dextrous kids aged 8 to 18 from Albury-Wodonga.
It opens with a dazzle of bubblegum-cabaret costumes — leaping, falling, swinging, tumbling — before the whole cast collapses in a heap. Three magician-detectives emerge, tracing the bodies in fluoro chalk, as a formidable narrator sets the scene: “Everyone thinks teenagers are discovering themselves. Truth is they’re making it up, stitching identities together from movie scenes and TikToks… Adolescence is a city at night — all neon and shadow. Nobody sees the whole thing. Not parents. Not friends. Not even the kid living through it. Especially not them.”
This intriguing gambit establishes a ‘film noir’ playground in which the kids build vignettes, trying on and discarding personas through breathtaking acrobatics. Director Anni Davey OAM was drawn to the way young people play with and shed identities and tribes, and the ‘murder mystery circus’ premise dramatises the processes of creation and destruction.
The show is far from sinister. It’s bursting with chaotic, beautiful stunts from performers who know exactly where their strengths lie. Leaning into hot jazz and big band swing, they work trapeze, silks, suspended poles, and a spinning cylinder manipulated entirely by a pair of feet. At various points, two performers entwine on suspended structures, limbs spinning to create a blurred Rorschach, arms indistinguishable from legs.
For all the larrikin high-jinks and nail-biting plummets, what struck me is the trust, strength and teamwork circus demands: the same qualities every parent wants for their children, and every screen makes harder to build. A quivering three-person human tower asks for total belief in the person below. Watching the cast deliver this with visible pride and pleasure is a joy, petrifying in places, but a joy. It’s a reminder of what young people can create together.
