Tom McCamus (12/81 Mickey's Amazing Music Machine)
Excerpt from Medicine Hat News 12/10/81: Tom McCamus
Mickey’s marvellous machine is kids’ play
THE MEDICINE HAT NEWS, Thursday, December 10,1981 By JAMIE PORTMAN
Southam News TORONTO - The machine looks like a junk dealer's nightmare - a bizarre conglomeration of discarded coils, wheels, light bulbs and scrap metal. But treat it nicely and it lights up like a Christmas tree and makes beautiful music. Sketch a guitar on a sheet of paper, shove it through a letter slot in the front of the machine, push a button and - presto! - the machine makes like a guitar. Feed it with drawings of a flute or a saxophone or a violin - and again it responds in kind. It can even cope with the demands of a group of schoolchildren. They enthusiastically submit a wild variety of sketches - and the machine turns into a full symphony orchestra. It’s actually known as Mickey’s Amazing Music Machine which also happens to be the title of a play currently wowing the moppet brigade at Toronto’s Young People’s Theatre. It’s a marvellous creation - the wacky work of a gifted Canadian stage designer named Jonathan Porter - and it frequently steals the show from such human performing colleagues as Jay Bowen, Diane Douglass, Tom McCamus, George Pothitos and Astrid Roch. Mickey’s Amazing Music Machine has been written and directed by Young People’s Theatre artistic director G. Moss.
....
His new play is about a one-man band player named Mickey who visits a junkyard in a search for new musical instruments only to be plunged into a series of adventures and misadventures involving his friend Molly, an eccentric inventor named Norman and the junkyard’s villainous owners, Bert and Girt. The highlights are the discovery of the Amazing Music Mac nine and - to the roaring delight of the pint-sized audience - the foiling of Bert and Girt. Along the way, there’s ample opportunity for audience participation in the form of singing, foot-stomping and hand-clapping. YPT productions never short-changes the audience in terms of quality. Tom McManus who delivers such a droll performance as inventor Norman, played lead roles last summer at the Shaw Festival.
© Medicine Hat News