Review: The King Of Broken Things is beautiful, poignant, lyrical theatre experience of the extraordinary

Loved, loved The King of Broken Things. There was a rapturous ovation at the Baxter Theatre on the opening night.  Cara Roberts delivers a superlative performance in the beautiful play by Michael Taylor-Broderick (writer, director, designer). Recently, the play received the Fleur du Cap Theatre Award for for Best Theatre Production for Children and Young People (productions in 2023).

The play is about finding beauty in broken things and particularly things which have been honed out of broken components to make something magical and surprising. Can everything be revived? How does one fix a broken country, it is posed in the play? This play was written in 2018 – before – a lot – before the pandemic – before our electricity grid was in tatters (load shedding was here before that but level 6 came in 2022 – as far as I am aware).  TKOBT is masterclass in the alchemy of narrative, performance and design. It won the FDC for young people but it is a play which speaks to all ages. I did not see small fry at the opening and yet the older contingent were responding as if they were youngsters- with whoops of delight. It is a play to re-ignite the inner child.

Michael Taylor-Broderick’s design is an installation with the possibility of the transformation of the commonplace into something extraordinary. It is a playground, a space for visceral and lyrical theatre to unfurl. This play reminds me of tinkering as a child, making puppet theatre in living rooms and rigging up lights and curtains which move, using broomsticks and whatever is at hand. Sadly in our techno dominated screen world, we tend to not tinker and explore with stuff. We are on our phones, fixated on our screens. The KOBT taps deep into so much – loss, grief, belonging, working through pain; finding joy in playing and re-imagining what is in one’s midst. Life fills what was a vacuum of loss and grief in the KOBT. Yes, we need to give ourselves space to grieve and be sad but TKOBT keys us in to rekindling hope and inhabiting it. Set construction by Bryan Hiles is astounding and heightens the narrative and sparks it with playfulness and wonder.

Michael Taylor-Broderick has embraced theatre as a vital medium and the lighting is very much key to tell this poignant story and Cara Roberts is a tour de force  in the way she totally inhabits the character (I am not going to plot spoil) and the landscape of broken things which are transmuted into a magical playground of possibility. The use of physical theatre is exceptional  as she navigates the playground – calibrating each gesture and movement with exquisite timing, she never loses focus and eye contact with the audience. The audience becomes very much a participant on what is presented.

Bravo to Michael Taylor-Broderick and his company Theatresmiths and to Sue Diepeveen of The Drama Factory for presenting its maiden run in Cape Town – in 2021. This was during the pandemic masks on – the whole story. Live theatre was reviving.  Read my interview with Michael about the trajectory of the play – birthed before Covid. https://thecaperobyn.co.za/theatre-interview-finding-hope-and-belief-with-the-king-of-broken-things-august-2021/ TKOBT premiered in September 2018 at the Hilton Arts Festival– for two performances. Live staging was interrupted by Covid interruptus. In 2020, they pivoted swiftly to online National Arts Festival, Makhanda, and the Fringe and received a Standard Bank Gold Ovation Award. And then it was back to stage and that led to the FDC, awarded this year.

It goes beyond to be inspired and to be upbeat; that there is beauty in brokenness. The King of Broken Things is beautiful, poignant, lyrical theatre which makes one smile. The physical emanation of the enchanting set, dovetailed with the tender, nuanced and impassioned performance, wistful and elegiac script by Taylor-Broderick, makes for a theatre experience of the extraordinary.

✳ Cara Roberts in The King of Broken Things. Photo: Suzy Bernstein. Supplied.

Related coverage on the TCR: http://: https://thecaperobyn.co.za/theatre-interview-finding-hope-and-belief-with-the-king-of-broken-things-august-2021/