Robot Song

An eleven-year-old girl, Juniper May (Adeline Hunter) receives a ‘petition’ that would devastate anyone.  It’s signed by her whole school.  It tells her that she looks like a robot and sounds like a robot.  And her classmates wish she had never been born.  Apart from the hurt and the nastiness, Juniper doesn’t get it.  What’s wrong with robots?  She loves robots.  Luckily for Juniper, she has wonderful (and well-resourced) parents…

In an amazing, prodigious performance, young Adeline Hunter creates Juniper as a remarkably intelligent, funny and imaginative girl who is definitely the main character: she sings catchy sad and funny songs (music by Nate Gilkes), she has her own vlog, and she has an intriguing relationship with the huge waste bin in her backyard.  That bin is sort of haven for Juniper and a magical source of treasures. 

But just as important is her loving Dad (Phillip McInnes, warm and very engaging) and her Mum (Michelle Doyle – who also doubles as the on-stage musician - keyboard, guitar and harp).  Dad is the kind of Dad who’s a bit of a big kid himself.  That is, as well as being the wiser, patient grown-up, he’s quite prepared to immerse himself in Juniper’s world and enjoy it and take it as seriously as she does.  And Mum unfailingly calls Juniper ‘Darling Heart’ – reassuring, ever loving. 

If this is beginning to sound a little saccharine, there is the fact of that horrible, wounding petition hanging over everything.  What this show pushes against is conformist bullying.  What it pushes for is inclusion.  It celebrates the idea that it’s okay to be different.

Robot Song is as much a show for parents as it is a hugely entertaining, funny, wondrous show for kids 7+.  It grew out of playwright Jolyon James’ own experience of parenting a child on the autism spectrum.  It dramatizes in words and song that the best way to parent a child who’s different is not to squeeze them into ‘normal’ but to enter their world and the way they see that world – versus the ‘normal’ world.

As the show progresses, and more robotic and exotic treasures come from the bin, Juniper finds (or does she imagine?) an animated robot friend who cheerfully reinterprets Juniper’s world and that nasty petition.  Is that a viable option for any bullied, excluded kid in the real world?  No.  But it’s the surprising and delightful resolution of Juniper May’s story – her story, not everyone’s.  The point is to endorse imagination and difference.  And for parents, Robot Song says, please go along with your kids’ difference: try to be patient and keep loving.

Michael Brindley