Review: Kathy Maniura: The Cycling Man at The Mill

Review by Kate Gaul

There is something deeply satisfying about watching a character unravel in real time—particularly when that character has spent a small fortune on lycra and still can’t quite outrun himself.

Kathy Maniura’s The Cycling Man arrives in Adelaide trailing the kind of Edinburgh Fringe buzz that can feel overinflated. Here, it’s earned. This is precise, intelligent character comedy, ridiculous on the surface, quietly devastating underneath.

We meet a middle-aged, newly single man clinging to identity through gear, stats, and self-mythology. He is, quite simply, a pompous git. And Maniura knows it. The brilliance lies in how finely calibrated the performance is: every gesture, every micro-shift in status, every absurd justification lands with elegant control. This is not chaos comedy,it’s engineered.

The drag king lens sharpens everything. Masculinity becomes both costume and cage, and Maniura plays the tension beautifully. There’s a delicious friction between bravado and fragility; between the man he insists he is and the one quietly falling apart in front of us.

And crucially, it travels. UK-inflected, yes, but the rhythms, the ego, the delusion of reinvention-through-hobby? Entirely legible to an Australian audience. You recognise this man. You may even have dated him. Are you married to him?

What elevates the work beyond parody is its restraint. Maniura resists the urge to push for easy grotesque. Instead, she allows the character’s desperation to leak through the cracks, making the comedy sharper and the undercurrent more affecting. Directed with a light but attentive touch by Cecily Nash, the show maintains a tightrope balance between satire and something more human.

It is, above all, very, very funny. Not in a blunt-force way, but in that sustained, accumulating rhythm where laughter builds because the world is so clearly, confidently drawn.

A masterclass in character work, and a reminder that the most absurd figures are often the most recognisable.

Image Supplied