Theatre: Joey the Mechanical Boy

The Nest Ensemble
Written and devised by Margi Brown Ash and Leah Mercer
Performed by Margi Brown Ash and Phillip Miolin
Directed by Leah Mercer
Set and costume designer Tessa Darcey
Lighting designer Karen Cook
Sound designer Joe Lui

Until November 22

Margi Brown Ash and Phillip Miolin (pic Leigh Brennan)


In their award-winning Eve (2012), the writer/performer Margi Brown Ash and writer/director Leah Mercer told the sad story of the now-forgotten Australian writer Eve Langley. The biographical details, though, were just a jumping-off point for their exploration of Eve’s rapture, and for Ash’s remarkable performance.
Their new play, Joey: the Mechanical Boy, also deals with real events and people. They may be obscure now, but, in the American frenzy for all things Freudian after WWII, the autistic boy Joey, his so-called “refrigerator mother” and the psychotherapist Dr Bruno Bettelheim, were big news.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian  

Theatre: Those Who Fall in Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon the Ocean Floor

By Finegan Kruckemeyer
Jo Morris and theMOXY collective
Directed by Adam Mitchell
Designed by India Mehta
Lighting design Chris Donnelly
Sound design Ben Collins
Starring Jo Morris, Renée Newman-Storen and Ben Mortley
Blue Room Theatre until 29 November

Jo Morris (l) Ben Mortley and Renée Newman-Storen

It’s a name to take seriously, despite itself. I don’t mean Those Who Fall in Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon the Ocean Floor so much as its writer, the extravagantly-monikered Finegan Kruckemeyer.
There are many of the good things about children’s theatre in Twifilladutoff, despite its decidedly adult themes and content. Four stories fold across each other over time and space. Each glitters with humour, but a melancholy hangs over them. Love, for all these characters, is as elusive as it is fundamental; life devours both itself and any fool who dares to tell the time. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian.