Jarred Keane reviews Giuseppe's Love Quest, Jeromaia Detto's offbeat, sincere clown show at Erskineville Town Hall for Sydney Fringe 2026 — an hour of gags, callbacks and consenting audience participation that isn't a gimmick but the point, and a reminder that love, in Detto's hands, is joy.
%402x.svg){kind=icon}
Jarred Keane reviews Giuseppe's Love Quest, Jeromaia Detto's offbeat, sincere clown show at Erskineville Town Hall for Sydney Fringe 2026 — an hour of gags, callbacks and consenting audience participation that isn't a gimmick but the point, and a reminder that love, in Detto's hands, is joy.
As the sun set the traffic pumped up and down from King Street, the Inner West's infamous arterial road. In the warm, fading light of a Thursday evening, Erskineville Town Hall stood as a reprieve from the noise, decay, and bad planning that greets you at some lesser festivals. The Inner West Council has been leaning further and further into support for artists of all kinds. These are well-kept, architecturally warm spaces, and Erskineville has also become the hub for Sydney Fringe's 'Emerging Artist Share House' series of curated shows by new faces. The spot however, has been a hub for innovative performances long before that was even conceived. Across the road is the infamous and iconic Imperial Hotel if you still have not secured your bearings.
Giuseppe's Love Quest is not the show of an emerging artist, but nonetheless, the location fits for an offbeat, somehow sincere clown show about what love is, how it feels, and how to find it.
When I say "clown show" please don't imagine Pennywise, the President, or other terrifying performers bathed in make up. Clowning is a beautiful, rich craft within the larger artform of Comedy that is almost always overshadowed by the circus and its accompanying (at times horrifying) imagery of make-up, goofy hair, big shoes, tiny bicycles and pants that are supposed to be baggy (BAGGY!). As demonstrated in this show, it is a conscious mode of play and spontaneity. Just like Improv and Stand Up, clowning requires lightning-fast adaptability and an intuitive awareness of the particular energies of the audience.
The man we meet in an unassuming room in the local town hall, ringed with black curtains and seated on perpendicular tiered rows, introduces himself as the titular Giuseppe. He is a thirty-five year old Italian man that has never known love, but who knows how to wear his capris high like Andrew Tate. At least, unlike the faux-millionaire, Giuseppe knows that earth tones are the way to go, and to match your loafers with a long red sash and simple white shirt with a high thread count. The creator of the character, Jeromaia Detto, is an Australian comedian, clown and award-winning improviser. As he would later state, he has been touring across Australia and abroad most of the year, having recently performed this particular show over 100 times in Edinburgh.
A feature of great clowning is the power of nothingness; of simplicity. The silent look, the expectant pause, the raised eyebrow and expressive eyes, all serve the purpose of drawing your attention to an obvious misdirect for a punch that you'll still never see coming. A caricature of a man asks 'What is Love?' because he knows nothing about it beyond the classic 1993 Haddaway song. For an hour, there are gags, props, jokes, callbacks and constant audience participation (with consent). His naivete knows no limits, nor does his infectious whimsy. By the end of the hour, a fresh warmth exists in the room and in the audience. This isn't simply a show performed by one man and a small team in support, it is a playground where you can find a mirror to your own life.
There is nothing forced in how Detto holds the stage or the audience's attention. He knows his craft, and fills the space with enthusiasm, confidence, uncertainty, glee and occasionally mini disco balls. What makes this more than a clown show is not the dialogue or (SPOILER ALERT:) the singing, it is how he has created a show from the simplest of ingredients, and rooted the theme of that show in exactly what his particular craft needs to thrive. To look for love is to look for connection, to be vulnerable to it, to nourish it, and to discover something more because of it. In short, and to be trite, to find love one needs to be open. That is the primary tool for the humble clown: his openness.
Jeromaia Detto is certainly a clown no one could fear.
His parting message, delivered after warning that he is about to break some people's hearts by dropping the character and switching to his deep, natural, Australian accent, was profound and simple: embrace whimsy and play.
These are simple concepts, and that is not a slight, but a stark reminder of how beautiful simplicity is, and how easy to overlook. There was even a coda of sorts to the show's exploration of a fictional man's quest for love, when Jeromaia directed the audience's thanks toward his technical assistant, the woman he met and fell in love with precisely at the start of the writing process for the show itself. There's proof right there, if not of love, then of making your life what you want it to be — you could say he manifested it.
Writer & Performer: Jeromaia Detto
Production photography: Nick Mick
Hero image: Press kit
Reviewed by Jarred Keane.
Event listing: sydneyfringe.com/events/jeromaia-detto-giuseppes-love-quest
.webp)
