A fairytale featuring a gothic marionette family won the hearts of adults and children alike at Brown’s Mart Theatre. One of only a few events for children in this year’s Darwin Festival, Hatched is the culmination of a two-year labour of love for its creator, Asphyxia. Inspired and determined to make her own puppets after a chance encounter with a master puppeteer in Guatemala, Asphyxia then taught herself how to use them.

The play begins when two characters step onto the stage carrying suitcases. These turn out to be giant story books, which, when opened to the delighted ‘ooohs’ of the young audience, reveal three miniature sets – a crypt, an apothecary, and a sewing room. Obsessive in their detail, they draw us into the world of an unusual family, the Grimstones.

Like the puppets she has created, Asphyxia does not speak in the play. Deaf from a young age, she uses the expressive visual language of Auslan to narrate while Paula Dowse interprets. Both manipulate the puppets and, rather than disguising the fact, are very open about it. This creates a lovely intimacy between the women and the puppets. They have successfully created characters for themselves that don’t overshadow their smaller counterparts, the marionettes. Dressed in tatty black with dark eye makeup, Asphyxia plays a descendant of the Grimstones, Gertrude Grimstone, and Dowse’s character is August, a kind of ‘hired help’ who wouldn’t be out of place in a Beckett play, and brings gentle humour to the piece.

Hatched has as its central character a young girl, Martha Grimstone, whose mother, Velvetta, has been grieving her beloved Mortimer for many years, dreaming of the babies they might have had together. She paints a melancholy picture sitting at her sewing machine, sewing garments ‘lined with love and warmth.’ But the clothes are not for her. She will no longer wear the clothes she makes because ‘she can’t bear the warmth while her husband lies cold in his grave.’

Martha hatches a plan: She asks her grandfather Elcho to teach her a spell to make a baby. When he refuses she sneaks into Elcho’s apothecary to make the spell herself. Her dream of drawing her mother out of her grief doesn’t work when the spell goes wrong and the baby, hatched from an egg, is born with three legs. Velvetta, instead of embracing the child, is horrified by him and seeks cold comfort in the crypt.

But baby, Crumpet Grimstone has the gift of magic, shown by his single tuft of hair, even though his three legs indicate he’ll have the mind of a child forever. Despite never seeing Crumpet practice any magic spells, Martha’s dream comes true: Velvetta finds herself thinking more and more about Crumpet, drawn to the world of the living. And so she comes to accept this child with a difference.

‘Society doesn’t always accept people who are different,’ Asphyxia explains in the post-show ‘Q and A’ session. ‘I’m encouraging everyone to be open-minded and accept difference.’

Told without being didactic, this is uncluttered storytelling carried out with sure hands. Haunting piano and sparse accordion melodies support the delicate action of the marionettes. Sounds of creaking doors, lightly blowing wind and owl hoots add another melancholy layer to the sumptuous world.

Absent are the often lurid colours that dominate shows for children. Warm olive greens, browns, and deep velvety reds reign supreme. The richly patterned walls seem to cocoon The Grimstones, protective walls that have silently shared the family’s days of love and sorrow.

Asphyxia has created a Gothic world in miniature. There are tiny bolts of material in Velvetta’s sewing room, a storm detector in Elcho’s apothecary, a tiny cauldron, an almost finished cup of tea and biscuit to create a lived in feel. This driven young woman has thought of everything, onstage and off. In 2008 she published an artist’s journal, a book based on her online journal, Fixie’s Shelf (fixiefoo.typepad.com), which documents the process of creating The Grimstones. It’s available for purchase after the show, as well as a CD of Ania Reynolds’ music.

Having trained in dance and circus, it seems fitting that Asphyxia’s creative journey now finds her performing with these charming, non-verbal creatures that require a puppeteer’s working hands in order to come to life. The Grimstones’ tender story of love and acceptance is a visually rich one, imbued with a meditative quality. It has moved many audiences since its launch in May last year and will impress many more to come. A pleasing pay-off, no doubt, for its hard-working and determined creator.

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