Upon the set of a bedroom scene, to the left of the stage, lies a dark wooden cupboard. Next to it? A white laundry basket. In the centre? A stately wooden bed, framed with curved carvings at its head and foot.
Yet the bedding is plain. Sickly white to be exact.
To the right? A tall lamp with a crimson-lit shade. Next to it? An 18th century King Louis-like chair in beige, with pincushions on its torso.
It is fairly dark, save for a dimmed light shining over the bed. There are four stage lights framing the area. Unnerving electro pop music chimes overhead, of a clock finding itself hard to wind. The music is getting louder and louder, and I am intrigued.
Crapbox is a reflective play in four parts. Four very universal, life-affirming stories of the challenges people face within the umbrella-like spectrum of aging.
Like four parts of a whole, Crapbox highlights the personal toils that may arise within a timeline of decline. Health challenges. Grieving. Loss of hope. The pendulum of the clocks that keep ticking away from us, without the ability to stop it.
But interestingly, this play is about how we cope in the aftermath of this later-life journey. More importantly? Where we sit in the thick of these things. How it weighs so heavily on our minds.
With our personal relationships. With spouses. With complex family dynamics.
It is a storytelling voyage. One which three characters, played by veteran theatre actors Anne Browning, Peter Houghton and Tom Gutteridge, set sail and guide us to hold tight: through the inevitable storms of late-life experiences.
We start with the first play, ‘Early Morning’, where, in their bedroom, a restless couple wake too early and cannot go back to sleep. We learn through their third- person conversation, (cleverly placed by award-winning scriptwriter Kevin Nemeth), that both of their minds are perturbed in waves of disquiet and future-related angst.
As this couple wait for the other to get up and make the morning coffee, we learn that there is an uneasy rhythm winding its way through their thoughts. An invisible clock ticking away at their inner wiring. Fears that are sometimes so big and overwhelming, that they can sometimes remain undefined by logic, regardless of a relationship’s natural rhythm of ‘peaks and valleys’.
The second play, moves us to the title of the show, ‘Crapbox’, in regional Victoria. Where we meet a recent widower, who not only misses his late wife terribly; but has discovered that his aspiring ‘tree change’ home, is haunted by ghosts.
That his new abode that he hoped would uplift him with oodles of nature and quiet, is simply ‘nothing more than an old Crapbox.’ Late at night he hears voices and furniture being moved around. The pressure of this frustrating situation combined with incessant thoughts about his late wife culminates in a very surprising aftermath.
The third play, ‘The Letter’, is a transitional memory piece, where a man speaks overhead about a long-lost letter he found from his late mother. While a woman is stripping a bed onstage and packing up her things in a bedroom, this man is reflecting upon who his mother was as a person. This is somewhat of an observational story: of how a changing perspective can bring on a state of forgiveness and personal transformation. Giving us hope, that even in loss, one can still reflect upon a memory with an open heart in its aftermath.
The final play, ‘Good Daughter’, is a deeply human, humorous piece exploring the messy foibles of ‘assisted dying’. It is a dark piece of irony, told through the eyes of an exasperated daughter, who decides to spare her mother the agony of the complex clutches of dementia, with outrageous complications.
This play is handled with empathy and care through the genius writing by Kevin Nemeth. He masterfully handles each life topic with sprinkles of dark humour, compassion and empathy, focusing not so much on the challenges themselves; but presenting what pathways forward are best for us, in order to survive them.
Veteran actors and real-life partners Peter Houghton and Anne Browning simply shine in this play. Batting the ball back and forth, their scene together is deeply funny and heartbreakingly real. Houghton is exceptional in playing light comedy through angst, while Browning stays true to her path of spousal acceptance, with aplomb.
Tom Gutteridge is deeply moving as the grieving widower. Instead of sitting in a place of deepened sadness, he is a playful storyteller, taking us on a matter-of-fact journey across a fragile emotional landscape.
Anne Browning also closes the play in fine form, playing a brave daughter making an unthinkable decision. Browning packs no punches with the challenging material she is given. Like a duck to water, she embodies a brittle mask but underneath it, her emotional well is infinite.
The transitions between scenes were seamlessly executed by the clever direction of the cast, delivering a multitude of layered meanings; while the combination of lighting design by Harrie Hogan, and sound by Ethan Hunter, were all used to their advantage to create either a lighter or somber mood.
This world premiere of Crapbox, by playwright Kevin Nemeth, was not only thought-provoking but a delight to watch. It was a true collaboration in every sense of the word, with a wonderful team of theatrical creators who embraced this play with heart.
To book tickets to Crapbox, please visit https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2026/crapbox.
Photographer: Dan Rabin
