> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://melbournestagereview.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The art of losing all control: The Portrait - URL: https://melbournestagereview.com/the-art-of-losing-all-control-the-portrait/ - Published: 2026-10-06T06:02:26.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-06T06:02:26.000Z - Description: He likes things just so. She has other ideas. The Portrait finds glorious, somewhat cathartic physical comedy in the oh-so-recognisable rules, rituals and petty irritations of working life. - Author: Ellen M. Scott - Tags: Reviews He arrives in Lycra, cleats and a cycling helmet sprouting the little plastic zip ties Melbourne riders use to discourage dive-bombing magpies. He has barely made it down the aisle before he is taking his own pulse. The result worries him. There is some controlled breathing, a pill, another check and, finally, satisfaction, expressed in the smallest possible gesture of triumph. We already know quite a lot about this chap. He is Tim Sneddon, one half of the gloriously mismatched pair at the centre of [*The Portrait*](https://www.melbournefringe.com.au/whats-on/events/the-portrait?ref=melbournestagereview.com). Created and directed by Clare Bartholomew, and created and performed by Sneddon and Emilie Bloom, the show is almost entirely wordless, its characters drawn through gesture, expression and meticulously observed physical detail. Sneddon, in particular, can turn fussiness into an art form. His gallery attendant has the pinched vigilance of a man who takes enormous pride in doing a small job properly. He strokes the gold cord hanging beside the blue velvet curtain that conceals the gallery's new portrait with almost erotic pleasure, delicately tickling its tassel, and seems nearly overcome by the loveliness and anticipation of it all. Even moving the barriers into position becomes an undertaking. There is a whole routine around correct manual handling, Sneddon bending and lifting with such conscientious attention to workplace procedure that anyone who has ever been instructed by an online training module on the correct way to pick up an object may feel a small shiver of recognition. ![Tim Sneddon, dressed as a gallery attendant in a black suit and staff lanyard, stands with legs apart and one fist clenched, his mouth open in an exaggerated expression of triumph.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4e/1d/4e1d8918-61fe-47b0-a53e-03b9c2038472/content/images/2026/10/Live-4---The-Portrait---Ian-Sutherland.jpg) Tim Sneddon in **The Portrait*. Photo: Ian Sutherland. Then Bloom's attendant arrives, and Sneddon's carefully ordered morning doesn't stand a chance. She comes in from the rain under an umbrella, wearing a poncho and bright red gumboots and carrying so many bags that she seems to have brought most of her possessions with her. She falls over. Then she falls over again. Bloom has a marvellous way of making each tumble seem both entirely avoidable and utterly inevitable, and before long Sneddon's attendant is simply watching her with the appalled expression of a man discovering that his new colleague may be beyond the reach of workplace induction. He tries anyway. There is a lovely bit of business in which he teaches her how a gallery attendant stands. The arms come out, the hands are folded and the whole arrangement is drawn neatly back towards the body. Bloom copies him. A minute correction follows. Whole conversations pass between these two through eyebrows. Each character's style of physical comedy are quite different, which is precisely why they rub together so well. Sneddon is working small, his character's irritation compressed into twitches, glances and ever more strenuous attempts at self-command. Bloom takes up space. Things spill out of her pockets. She coughs, rummages, chews, trips and generally introduces into the gallery all the unruly evidence of having a body. ![Emilie Bloom and Tim Sneddon tussle in front of a bright blue curtain, Bloom holding a red cup while Sneddon recoils with his arms raised.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4e/1d/4e1d8918-61fe-47b0-a53e-03b9c2038472/content/images/2026/10/LIVE-3---The-Portrait---Ian-Sutherland.jpg) Emilie Bloom and Tim Sneddon in **The Portrait*. Photo: Ian Sutherland. At one point she smells something unpleasant and, after some determined efforts to catch her colleague's eye, asks through gesture whether he has farted. His horror is magnificent. She finds this so funny that she does it again. What follows involves a shoe and a problem that neither of them solves in quite the way the other would prefer. By the time Bloom ends up in a pair of glittering blue sneakers, Sneddon's surrender to the situation feels almost heroic. It is in these apparently silly exchanges that *The Portrait* is at its sharpest. Anyone who has suffered through “teamwork” dynamics will recognise something here: the colleague whose habits slowly drive you up the wall, the petty rule that becomes inexplicably important once somebody else breaks it, the strange transformation by which an ordinary person acquires a lanyard and finds themselves defending institutional procedure. Sneddon's attendant is particularly delicious because his authority is so meagre and means so much to him. He is both the enforcer of the rules and their most devoted subject. When Bloom's attendant misbehaves, the offence seems to enter his bloodstream. Sometimes it quite literally changes the world around him. Sarah Platts' lighting suddenly burns red and, for a few seconds, the mild gallery attendant appears to be undergoing some terrible internal event. The first time it happens, after all that pulse checking, you wonder whether he might actually be having a heart attack. Then we understand: this is simply what it feels like to him when Bloom does something she shouldn't. ![Tim Sneddon throws his head back and opens his mouth in a silent scream, hands spread beside him as the stage is flooded with intense red light.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4e/1d/4e1d8918-61fe-47b0-a53e-03b9c2038472/content/images/2026/10/Live-2---The-Portrait---Ian-Sutherland.jpg) Tim Sneddon in **The Portrait*. Photo: Ian Sutherland. The joke gets funnier with repetition, helped enormously by Sneddon's ability to look as though another person's minor workplace infringement has caused him profound spiritual injury. Bloom is every bit his match. The looseness is deceptive: there is real precision in the falls and flurries, in the way one small distraction produces another, and in the speed with which innocence turns into mischief. Their relationship has something of the naughty child and the despairing adult about it, except that the roles keep slipping. Sneddon's attendant is tempted too. He just believes curiosity ought to fill out the proper paperwork first. And there is plenty to be curious about. The portrait itself remains hidden behind that beautiful blue curtain, waiting for its grand unveiling, while protest noises from outside suggest that not everyone is pleased about its arrival. The temptation to peek grows steadily harder to resist. There is an obvious debt here to Mr Bean, and *The Portrait* wears it happily. It shares Rowan Atkinson's delight in the tiny social humiliation that swells into calamity, and in the terrible ingenuity with which a person can turn a manageable problem into an unmanageable one. Bloom and Sneddon make that familiar comic territory entirely their own. ![Tim Sneddon and Emilie Bloom stand stiffly on either side of a tall blue curtain concealing the portrait, both wearing black suits and blue staff lanyards with anxious expressions.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4e/1d/4e1d8918-61fe-47b0-a53e-03b9c2038472/content/images/2026/10/Live-6---The-Portrait---Ian-Sutherland-1.jpg) Tim Sneddon and Emilie Bloom in **The Portrait*. Photo: Ian Sutherland. And Bartholomew keeps the screws turning. A pristine gallery is not the ideal environment for Bloom's particular talents, and as the morning proceeds there are more rules to break, more objects to misbehave and more reasons for Sneddon to look as though his soul has briefly left his body. Earlier bits return unexpectedly; apparently throwaway details prove useful later. The comedy accumulates superbly, without the show ever seeming in a hurry to reach the next gag. The result is an hour of physical comedy that is exquisitely observed, beautifully performed and uproariously funny. By the end, the audience was roaring. Perhaps that is because beneath all the expertly executed slapstick there is something horribly familiar about this pair. Workplaces require us to spend our days accommodating and negotiating other people's habits: their noises, their mess, their ways of doing things, their inexplicable failure to understand that there is a correct place to put something and they have put it somewhere else. *The Portrait* takes that everyday irritation and lets it grow wonderfully, disastrously out of proportion. Eventually, of course, somebody is going to have to open the curtain. It would be a shame to say what happens when they do. --- [*The Portrait*](https://www.melbournefringe.com.au/whats-on/events/the-portrait?ref=melbournestagereview.com) was performed at Trades Hall from 30 September to 4 October as part of [Melbourne Fringe Festival](https://www.melbournefringe.com.au/?ref=melbournestagereview.com) 2026. --- Disclosure: A complimentary ticket to *The Portrait* was provided to Melbourne Stage Review for the purpose of review. Melbourne Stage Review retains full editorial independence.