Clockheart Boy

A clever, fantastical and delicately moving story about coping with loss, Dumbshow’s Clockheart Boy is a lesson in exceptional fairy-tale family theatre, the sort that has audience members leaving the room grinning broadly while discreetly dabbing their eyes with Kleenex.

In his mysterious castle overlooking the sea, the Professor pines for his daughter Sophie, who went out to play on a storm-whipped beach 15 years ago, never to return. He still hasn’t given up the search for her and creates a gang of kindly humanoid helpers—Peepers, Brolly, Bulb and Gobble—to look after his household following the death of his wife, and to help him build a giant telescope to scour the heavens for Sophie.

It doesn't find her but locates instead a small boy without a heart who has been washed ashore nearby. Brought back to life by the Professor and named Clockheart Boy, it looks like he may return love and happiness to the home. But there’s something lurking in the basement with other ideas – the sinister legacy of a failed experiment by the Professor at the pit of his despair.

All performed to a mellifluous live score by a wind-up pianist (who at one stage hilariously storms off stage when the Professor throws a tantrum at him), Clockheart Boy is a tirelessly inventive and gently moving play by a fast-rising young company with a very bright future. There’s joy befitting Disney, and darkness and emotional complexity worthy of Tim Burton. Catch it quick – time’s ticking.