With great ambition, Cassie Workman creates a magical alternate reality to explore the decay of American ideals and the nation’s collapse into ugly authoritarianism.

The fictional West Valley Mall, an abandoned 1980s-era shopping centre in Newark, New Jersey, is her Narnia, now in its perpetual winter. It’s a land encountered by a curious nine-year-old boy seeking adventures in its dereliction, like an explorer uncovering the Lost City of Capitalism and investigating its once-precious artefacts.

‘America is the mall’ is the show’s slogan, should you need your metaphors spelled out, while faded advertising around the complex preaches the core tenet of consumerism: ‘Happiness is a bargain away.’

Workman has direct experience of how America’s once-thriving malls have failed, having spent a couple of years living in Brooklyn, the New York borough known for both hipsters and crimes, which she wittily combines into one mental image.

Even in this liberal enclave, one can only imagine what it’s like to be a trans woman in Trump’s hateful America. However, Workman is not here to talk about herself, but the thuggish, racist activities of ICE she has witnessed first-hand.

The preamble is bleak and affecting, but the story proper is enchanting, despite the bleakness it portrays, and frequently funny, thanks to the flourishes she adds. That could be a jingle for the mall’s key-cutting kiosk or bits of quirky stand-up about frisbees, fluff and ‘Crazy Dave’-style adverts for price-slashing business. It’s not entirely an original premise, this last one, but Workman takes it to distinctive levels, surreal by being prosaic.

Some of the routines are so smart they literally need footnotes, should you not know that Edward Bernays is the father of manipulative public relations.

The 44-year-old comedian’s worldbuilding is comprehensive, occasionally illustrated by delightful drawings, enhancing the narrative drive about finding your way home – which is not necessarily a geographic place and certainly very different from ‘go back to where you came from’

You Are Here is a poignant, poetic and bold commentary on America’s decline, leaving audiences with a feeling of having had a good time, but also that we all deserve better than the greed of capitalism and narrow-minded, uncurious, prejudice epitomised by Donald Trump.

• Cassie Workman: You Are Here is on at Melbourne Town Hall at 9.10pm (8.10pm Sundays) until April 19.

Review date: 13 Apr 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival