Review: Plastic and Chicken Bones, Voila Festival at Etcetera Theatre 13 – 16 November 2025

‘how much control do we want to give technology’ ★★★ ½    

Plastic and Chicken Bones, written and performed by Malcolm Galea is an example of astute writing, prescient themes and proof that science fiction does not just belong to high budget films and TV series. This one-man show above a pub theatre in Camden is Black Mirror meets Brave New World presented in a small black box theatre. This is all the more impressive considering the content of the show: powerful AI, ideologues and time-travel. It is proof that these ideas, if packaged in a good story, do not need CGI and green screens as vehicles to help tell them, they will hit home.

The storytelling switches from the action of the play to audience direct-address, whereby our narrator and central character ‘Driscoll’ brings our 2025 brains up to speed on what has happened between now and then—then being an unnamed period in the distant (or not so distant) future. My favourite moment was a pseudo geo-history lesson when Driscoll patiently taught us about the Russo-Canadian alliance coming down the line: this was ingeniously mapped out using a pizza box, an empty vodka bottle and a maple syrup container. We also learnt about the migration of the global south to the global north represented using chai tea and oyster sauce: all too familiar packaging for this particular global north audience. Driscoll, we learn, has been projected back in time to 2025 from an unspecified future period. In this future world, AI reigns supreme and Siri has been replaced by Zimmi—faithfully trusted by human kind to prevent disaster. Humans apparently, had failed at this.

This hits at the central theme and question of the show: how much control do we want to give technology and, if we’re not handing over the reins then when do we, as a society, start taking responsibility for our mess?

Nonetheless, despite its undoubtedly pressing themes and smart writing, the production was at times let down by a performance which felt at moments self-conscious and hindered. Switching at times between different characters and talking to a disembodied AI voice representing Zimmi, Gallea’s direction felt lacking in specificity and that more could have been done to bring this insightful dystopia to life.

Cast & Creatives

Writer: Malcolm Galea

Director: Denise Mulholland

Cast: Malcolm Galea

Voice Over: Maxine Attard

Images: Andy O’Hara