My Private Parts

A woman so desperate for babies that she embarks on a long voyage through IVF – and then writes a play about her failures  – doesn’t suggest a lot of laughs.  Writer/performer Deborah Thomson and sidekick Lucy Miller, however, present this tale with just the right mix of tender truth, comic hyperbole and quick theatrical inventiveness.  Thomson’s inspiration was to set this very modern marriage of birth and science back in the certainties of the 1950’s, employing a sunny retro design and an ironic use of upbeat songs. A three piece band and a huge image of a Hollywood film goddess, with a microwave embedded in place of her private parts, helps set the mood.  From the start, with Doris Day’s Que Sera Sera (Whatever will be, will be), we are engaged and smiling.

Miller plays all the other characters on Thomson’s journey – the confidante supporting her through dud boyfriends; then the loving husband delivering procreation by the clock and later by the test-tube; and an army of cheery IVF advisers, officious nurses and doctors with bad news on the phone.

It’s baudy and wittily observed but also somehow innocent and life-affirming, with the pain close to the surface but the narrative skipping through Thomson’s heroic endeavour.  Both performers are fine singers and their double acts and mimes mostly well punctuated.

My Private Parts: An inside view of fertilisation is slickly restaged by co-directors Brendon McDonall and James Beach after a successful premiere at the Sydney Fringe two years ago. Sydney’s Seymour Centre plays an important role in giving such gems another life.

Martin Portus