Wil Greenway: The Way the City Ate the Stars

Imagine it's Christmas, and that it's almost unbearably hot. Wil Greenway's storytelling makes us hold these almost impossible thoughts in our minds as he transports us a few thousand miles and six months away from a chilly Edinburgh summer. This packed classroom at the Underbelly Med Quad fills with warmth rising from our bodies, and from the exhilarating power of his surreal love story.

It's a story that hops and leaps through time, from his home city of Melbourne to a rural hospital where Margaret lies, extremely pregnant and completely alone. A slightly deaf consultant summons the wrong men to her bedside: her aged Uncle Sven, and Greenway himself. Or his narrator, anyway – Greenway's unswerving loyalty to the first person can't hide the fact that he's laying the foundations for the tallest of tall tales.

What follows is a hectic motorway ride across Australia. Dramatic events pile up – seagull attacks, surprise meetings, car crashes, spilt burial urns. Greenway constantly draws attention to his own technique, doubling back on details or dangling alternative possibilities. This gives his story a spontaneous feel, like a meandering pub anecdote that sprawls through an evening. But Greenway's experience shows in his ability to keep a sense of real narrative urgency through all these surreal detours and whimsical asides.

His self-awareness only falters when it comes to the two-piece band that soundtrack his words: there's not enough interplay between the three for it to feel like they're fully a part of his adventures. But their sunny accompaniment only adds to the simmering heat of his roadtrip, with a rapt audience packed in for the ride.