Sunday Arts Magazine

23 Jan 2023

Lemon Tree on Dreg Street

Arts, Performing Arts, Sunday Arts Magazine

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Playing as a part of the 2023 Midsumma Festival,
award-winning playwright and poet Amy May Nunn
returns to Theatre Works with their latest work; Lemon

Tree on Dreg Street. Incorporating music, ritual and rev-
elry, this joy filled premiere season is a heart-on-its-
sleeve ode to those who slip through the cracks, a love letter to the places we make sacred, and a celebration of

the deep human need for belonging.
Complete with a community of wonderfully oddball characters, the story of Lemon Tree on Dreg Street centres
around Twiglet and Boots, who live in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of suburbia. With their home, and the
buildings around them, just waiting to be gobbled up by developers, the pair is determined to make the most of
Summer while they can. But with an old Possum marrying their lemon tree, a vagabond Cowgirl officiating the
ceremony, and a Vulture circling the property, things are bound to get interesting…
“What makes this show different is the unusual balance it strikes between innocence and grit,” explains writer
Amy May Nunn. “There’s a wonderfully rich tapestry of poetry, music, and storytelling weaving in and out of the
play. A friend of mine described it as “Urban Queer A.A. Milne” and there’s definitely something in that. It has a

kind of grown-up storybook feeling. I’ve always been drawn to heightened worlds that are fantastical and com-
plex, like Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.”

“I think audiences will be surprised and delighted by the characters’ heightened personalities, hilarious ways of

expressing themselves, and slightly left-of-reality existence,” adds Director Miranda Middleton. “We’ve got a re-
markable team of creatives on board and we’re all working to create a piece like nothing you’ve seen before,

whilst also adding to the tapestry of epic and quintessentially Australian plays.”