Claudia O'Doherty gives a charming performance as the sole surviving resident of Aquaplex, an international deep-sea habitat that was developed in the 1970s and exploded suddenly in the 90s. The production proceeds as a scattershot lecture about the facility and its unique, rather curious-sounding culture, using hand-drawn visual aids, models made out of aluminium foil and shoeboxes, and performances of the colony's traditional dances. (There are some hilarious extracts from a piece of documentary theatre the Aquaplexians developed to commemorate an attack by a colossal squid. It was, O'Doherty says, "very cathartic".) O'Doherty presents a fully developed, richly detailed world where people ride underwater bikes, speak to dolphins, have their own customs and wear wetsuits all the time, reminding one of television's campy seaQuest DSV or Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. With that film it shares both a sense of melancholic loss and an air of childlike wonder. One looks forward with interest to what the talented O'Doherty will do next.

The Australian, 11 January 2010