REVIEW: Factory Made - Phoenix Ensemble

Factory Made – A New Musical

Book, Director, Set Design: Douglas Berry

Composer, Music Director: Your Man Alex Smith

Choreography, Costume Design, Props, Hair and Makeup: Jemma Crowhurst

Lighting Design: Maddy Bosanko

Sound Design: Ben Cooke and Angelina Mustafay

Photography: Images by Anderson and Josh Sweeney

“Music has to say something to be good. But robots have nothing to say...”

Factory Made is a brand-new musical by Douglas Berry and Your Man Alex Smith, presented at Phoenix Ensemble. This show asks us whether art can still mean something if a robot helps to create it... all while serving up killer rock songs, dastardly corporate villains, tap dancing, improv, and one very loveable escapee from the factory floor.

The story follows OceanSix, a corporation so aggressively greedy it has managed to monopolise status over everything (ahem, Amazon). With robots running its factories, one robot named Pru makes a daring escape and crash-lands into the life of Stu, the anxious frontman of the band Friendship Alliance. Stu was eagerly expecting a guitar amp but instead receives a sunshiny robot with the worldly wisdom of a goldfish.

Stu’s band is gearing up for their debut performance when one of their members bails, leaving Pru as the emergency replacement. The problem is, the band’s entire persona is speaking out against OceanSix and corporate exploitation. So, using a robot in their music makes them look a bit… hypocritical. And thus, the story poses an intriguing question: have they become the very thing they are fighting against? In a world currently drowning in conversations about AI, art, creativity and ownership, the show has plenty to say. Beneath the punchlines and pratfalls, there's a real argument being made about why art matters, why effort matters, and why music needs to come from somewhere inside.

Phoebe Imberger portrayed Pru as a walking ray of sunshine, full of brightness, sweetness and oddness. Her clear, gentle singing voice gave the character an extra warmth beneath the robotic quirks. She had a Janet-like quality from The Good Place: helpful, chipper, otherworldly, and impossible not to love. Her friendship with Stu was the show’s emotional epicentre, like a heartwarming buddy comedy where you totally get why this ragtag group would want to protect her.

Alex Smith was wonderful as Stu, giving him all the awkward, anxious, hopeful musician qualities needed to make the character work. Stu was the kind of person who clearly had big feelings and big principles, but very little ability to calmly process anything. His number “Robots, They Ain’t Got It” was one of the early standouts, with big Dewey from School of Rock flavour as Stu argued that music needs struggle, soul, and something to say.

The chemistry between Imberger and Smith had such a sweet, odd-couple quality to it, and the show was at its strongest when it let these two bounce off each other: think Lilo and Stitch, Buzz and Woody, Mantis and Drax. A standout sequence was “I’m a Detective,” a mini-musical within the musical where Stu and Pru pretended to be cops, fought crime, and were so committed to the bit that it actually worked. The songwriting, storytelling, choreography, and props all combined for perfect comedic effect. It was a blast watching the duo discover just how far they could push their 'improv' without being caught out.

Jemma Crowhurst rocked the stage as Tess. She had the rock chick attitude, the voice, and the stage presence. Plus, she managed to choreograph the show, design the costumes, props, hair, and makeup.. so apparently sleep is just an option in her life. Emma Erdis brought some serious Terminator vibes as M.A.X., especially when rocking out to the hard-hitting tune “To the Xtreme.” And I can't forget Abi Pineda, who nailed it as the tap-dancing(!) Robot Assistant. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to master the art of walking without rolling my ankle every damn day.

Rae Rose was fantastic as Deeandra, the big boss of OceanSix. All greed, grins, and power poses, they owned the opening number “Factory Made” like a corporate villain straight out of a comedy-horror flick. Rae had the crazy villain look and voice mastered to a tee. Each time they strutted on stage Deeandra was as slick as a shark in a business suit, with a dash of mean girl nastiness and a sprinkle of sarcastic glee.

The Shareholders, played by Oliver Catton, Liam Hartley, Torin Cook, and Daniel Lelic, were the epitome of wealthy snobs, cranked up to about one trillion on the snooty scale. Their motto was “F*ck poor people,” which pretty much told us all we needed to know about them. All four were so funny that I do not know how anyone on stage survived without breaking. I would have been useless.

The casting was excellent across the board. Douglas Berry’s script was hilarious to me. Not just “polite theatre chuckle” funny either. The kind of funny where you hear people still repeating lines to each other at interval. The direction made room for all the silliness in the story, mixing awkward pauses, silly costumes, background gags, goofy physicality and witty one-liners. It had a very Starkid-adjacent flavour: homemade, high-concept, nerdy, self-aware, oddly sincere, and completely willing to run at a ridiculous idea until it became emotionally sincere. It was anti-capitalist sci-fi, buddy-cop, and musical fever dream rolled into one. I swear I wrote a play just like this two decades ago called The Random Adventures of Bobble and Spoink.

The music was the show’s not-so-secret weapon. Alex Smith tossed in a wild mix of rock, synth, barbershop quartets, villain ballads, detective jingles, and revolutionary musical theatre. The Act II opener, “The Spectrum,” was my personal favourite. I need it immediately so it can become my ringtone, my alarm, and my entire personality. It was on the nose, catchy, and odd in the way the best musical theatre songs often are. “To the Shop,” the barbershop quartet number, was another impressive highlight (special shoutout to Daniel’s falsetto!)

“Enough Wasting Time” was an intense theatrical solo before expanding into a full-cast moment, complete with an intentional rock pulse and flag wave that felt very “Do You Hear the People Sing?” if Les Mis had been hijacked by robots. Then, near the end, Alex’s ballad brought a real sweetness back into the story. For all its chaos, the show did have a heart, and the final emotional beats worked because the production had taken the time to build genuine affection between its characters.

Jemma Crowhurst’s choreography was a major strength of the production. The opening number used mechanical precision beautifully, instantly setting up the world of the show. That physical language carried through the production, balancing comedy, storytelling and musical flair. The Dream Ballet was a particular standout, giving us M.A.X.’s villain origin story through cinematic music, slow-motion movement and dramatic blocking.

Visually, the production had a playful and cohesive identity. Douglas Berry’s set design supported the shifts between factory, band space, and urban streets. There was a lot of humour baked into the design, particularly in the costumes and prop work, that gave the whole show an extra boost of personality. Maddy Bosanko’s lighting helped shift the production cleanly between comedy, corporate menace and rock-concert flair, giving each part of the world its own visual punch. Ben Cooke and Angelina Mustafay’s sound design was also excellent, not only supporting the sci-fi setting but landing some of the jokes itself. Sound design being funny is not something I get to write often, so I was very pleased to enjoy the rare treat.

The audience was completely hooked. Laughter constantly echoed around the theatre, and by interval, people were already swapping favourite moments and predicting where the story might go next. We were invested and we wanted answers! I had a great time with Factory Made. It had its own strange beating heart and was packed with songs I wanted to hear again.