La Mama, June 3,10,17 & 24


(3 stars)


AMERICAN writer-performer Mike Daisey - a kind of Mike Moore meets Spalding Gray - created a furore recently when it was discovered he'd taken poetic licence in his investigative expose of substandard working conditions at the factory in China where 50 per cent of the world's electronics are manufactured - in particular, a large chunk of Apple products. Sprung bad, Daisey delivered a retraction on American Public Radio's This American Life: presenter Ira Glass calling Daisey to account for his major ethical stuff-up made for seriously compelling radio.


Agony & Ecstasy is not really about the ''techno libertarian hippie'' and Apple founder Steve Jobs, but rather a first-person monologue-cum-call-to-arms charting Daisey's obsession with Apple technology: ''I am a worshipper at the cult of Mac''. Daisey goes on a pilgrimage to Shenzhen, where he witnesses Apple's underbelly and interviews traumatised Foxconn factory workers (some made up, it turns out).


Melburnian Richard Pettifer delivers Daisey's intermittently fascinating monologue with a tokenistic nod to the recent scandal: we hear an excerpt from the now-famous on-air retraction and Pettifer sports a T-shirt emblazoned with LIAR. He does a decent enough job imparting the text, although reliance on notes interrupts the flow and overall, the presentation could have done with a bit more sculpting. Pettifer's take on Daisey's story, given its controversy, is underdeveloped. As theatre, it lacks coherence, but if you're not familiar with Daisey's brand of theatre-as-weapon, it's well worth a look.