Theatre: The King of Broken Things
4 October 2024
HMS Bloemhof-skoolsaal
The King of Broken Things is a heart-melting play that invites the audience into a world filled with endless possibilities. Directed by Michael Taylor-Broderick, this production explores universal themes of imperfection, healing, imagination, and bullying. This is all brought to life by Cara Roberts, who plays a young boy who is determined to bring all the broken things around him back to life.
The King of Broken Things was the Winner of 2023 Woordtrofee for Best Achievement in Children’s Theatre. PHOTO: Supplied/ Woordfees
Nothing is fully broken
The play starts with a boy shaken by the bullying he experiences daily at school. As his character unfolds, his sense of purpose blooms: The boy collects items around him that society deems useless and unusable and breathes new life into them. He believes that nothing is fully broken, not even people. They can all be put back together again or given new life.
Roberts takes the audience on a journey as she portrays the boy who, through his wild imagination, sees the beauty and potential in all the broken things around him. Her embodiment of him transports the audience to a world of naivety and sincerity, making the world feel brand new with childlike optimism. Roberts played this character with every aspect of her being, embodying the character’s hope for the world.
A meaningful junkyard
Taylor-Broderick’s direction emphasises the magic of the small things in life that are often overlooked. With the naked eye and without context, the set design would look like a pile of scraps, but ultimately it ties in perfectly with the theme of imagination and breathing new life into things. The broken objects on set comes to represent not just objects that were physically broken, but also the emotional wounds that exist within people.
Scattered throughout the play are metaphors about life; as the boy creates new things out of the broken things, the audience is reminded of the resilience that exists within them. The audience was fully engaged and challenged by the boy’s words.