2024
Failure: A Love Story
by
Phil Dawkins
directed by
Rod Thompson
“It’s about Time”
It’s 1928, and it’s about time Mortimer found a wife. He has a lot going for him – he is very rich, good looking, personable, sharp, but he wouldn't know the time of day!.
Gerty Fail is a thoroughly modern young lady. She has been running the family business “Fail Clockworks, Est 1900” since the untimely demise of her parents. She has absorbed these new-fangled ideas of female equality and it is certainly not “love at first sight”, in fact she comes very close to throwing him out.
This is a love story, so the formula is that they will disagree about everything, eventually fall in love, and finally live happily ever after. But this play does not follow the usual rules (or any rules) and the actual story is much less predictable - much less!"
Chicago, 1928, follow the three Fail sisters and their hopes and dreams .
Through humour, the story explores themes of love, loss, and the passage of time.
"… a theatrical experience that will stay in your memory for years to come.”
Celebrating the joy and sorrow of life's fleeting moments.
“Just because something ends, that don't mean it wasn't a great success.”
PRODUCTION TEAM
Director
Rod Thompson
Stage manager
Trish Pledger
Rosemary Murray
Musical Advisor
CAST
Sophie Morrison
Jenny June Fail
Sabrina Fu
Nelly Fail
Lynette Wockner
Mae, December, Cuckoo Clock, Moses, Biographer
Bhaskara Setiawan
Henry Fail
Nathan Seng
John N Fail
Lachlan Gregory Hugh
Mortimer Mortimer
Tracy Reeves
Marietta Fail
Milton Scully
Gramophone
Erin Hall
Gerty Fail
Shane Fell
Old Dog, Dodd, Doc, Grantland Rice
The Roaring Twenties
Just one hundred years ago! They were exciting, if dangerous times, Art Deco, Spectacular Clothing, Jazz, Prohibition, Speak-easies, The rise of organised crime, The St Valentines Day massacre. Of all places, Chicago seems to have been, if not the hub of all this, at least involved up to its stylish armpits.
This is the background, but not the subject of this play about a family of three girls and a boy, running their family business on the corner of Lumber and Love Streets, by the banks of the smelly Chicago River.
They have successfully run the family clock repair business since the death of their parents, who had emigrated from The Old Country. They are:
Gerty Fail: An accomplished clock repairer since a very young age.
Jenny June Fail: A very accomplished swimmer and diver with a crush on Johnny Weissmuller (whom she came second to in a diving competition).
Nelly Fail: A bright young thing who loves life, music and dancing. A professional singer (who hasn't been discovered yet).
John N Fail: Their adopted brother, who finds animals better company than people. In fact, his best friend is Moses who was found floating down the Chicago River in a wicker basket, which also contained the baby John N. (Moses is a ball python).
Into the Fail Family s peaceful but not quiet life, surrounded by music, clocks, and animals, comes Mortimer. He is rich, successful, and an all-round nice guy.
While sad in parts, it is the story of a family that lived and loved in the roaring twenties. It is now a hundred years later. But this is NOT a tragedy.
It is probably the funniest, cleverest, brightest, sassiest, corniest, picaresque, pun-infested, historically accurate, uplifting “Sad Play” in the business.
It is a play about TIME.
As physicist Carlo Rovelli says “... it isn't absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life”.
It is a play about PEOPLE: strange and wonderful, smart and foolish, but all likeable.