Looking into a Roslyn Packer Theatre bathroom mirror at the end of the show, I was startled to see the entire whites of both eyes flushed pink.

James Thiérrée’s ROOM – an epic, fervently surreal voyage of miraculous visuals and sound by the Swiss-French avant-garde auteur, and a grand meta-hurl through the endless and unruly labyrinthine of its creator’s mind – tilts far more to mirth than melancholy.

Laugh? Yes, we all did, with that delighted barking response to the electrifying absurd. But weeping isn’t something the show provokes. My eyeballs, I noted, were quite dry.

So, why the ocular reddening? I genuinely think that, for long stretches of the almost one-hour-forty runtime, I had simply forgotten to blink.

James Thiérrée ROOM. Photo © Manon Bollery

And, indeed, I urge you! Do not blink! Do not miss a second! A Sydney Festival headliner, and a response to COVID-19’s cabin fever effects, ROOM is a grand tongue-in-cheek cacophony of all manner of instruments, songs (some operatic, some rock ‘n’ roll), physical theatre, a throng of contortionists, musicians, acrobats and clowns, a jaw-dropping and incessantly moving set, fabulous costuming, and the kind of brazen ambition we might...