THE KING OF BROKEN THINGS: Theatre
Venue: Victoria Theatre
Next performance: Sunday 6 July 10:00
Review
By Phila-Nathi Mapisa
“Broken things when fixed are just like unbroken things.” I can’t unhear this.
Cara Roberts put me through a lot in The King of Broken Things. She plays one of the kings of broken things, a frantic young boy-child surrounded by apparently useless items. The other king is his all-knowing, imaginative, calm-to-his-storm father.
This fixer of all things broken has a glass-half-full approach when things fall apart. He can fix anything, even a broken promise — which (by the way) is fixed by forgiveness.
He draws from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, the golden repair of shattered pottery, and insists that, once fixed, things are better than they were before. Next up on his fix-list? His mom’s broken heart — left that way ever since dad left.
It’s a beautiful play that will haunt you with important truths. “It’s worth keeping things alive,” says the boy-king. “Scars are there to show what you’ve been through.” I regret not bringing tissues.
