BATS Theatre
June 20-July 5 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

THE 2008 Young and Hungry Festival trio of new plays all have darkness in the form of death at their hearts. But that is not to say they are depressing affairs – on opening night laughter was the predominant audience response. As usual, the young performers involved in each professionally mentored show put a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm into the works, despite their varying quality. It’s a worthwhile endeavour and BATS and the Young and Hungry Board and mentors should be commended for keeping the spirit alive during times of increasingly straightened arts funding.

Circa Theatre
June 14-July 19 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

“DEATH to literalism!” proclaims one of the characters in Love Song – and so John Kolvenbach’s play proceeds to buck the literal and tangible in favour of abstract feelings and sensations. Beane (Gavin Rutherford) is an unusual, depressed city dweller with a job he has no attachment to and a lack of possessions. When the pay opens the room is closing in on him (done in this version cleverly with a shrinking square of light and sound rather than a literal closing in of the walls as indicated in the script). Beane’s spirit seems to be embodied in a lamp with a bare light bulb that is flickering fainter. His sole tie to the realm of ‘real’ human emotions seems to be his outwardly successful sister, Joan and her amateur psychologist husband, Harry. But his interactions with them reveal him to be (humorously) pretty far removed from ‘normal’ human responses. The outlook for Beane is looking pretty bleak until Molly, a charming house burglar, bursts into his apartment and discovers he has nothing to steal, except a cup from which he eats all his meals. Beane’s interaction with Molly brightens his world and heightens his senses but makes him appear even more abnormal to Joan and Harry.

Downstage Theatre
May 30-June 28 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

My Brilliant Divorce is a one woman play that tells the story of Angela Kennedy Lipsky, recently ditched by her husband in favour of a younger, more exotic model. It ostensibly tells of her struggle through the first few years of ‘singledom’ after spending the majority of her adulthood identified as wife and mother. I think it is supposed to be empowering. Personally I thought it was the opposite. The play is littered with bad and sometimes offensive clichés and stereotypes. It is only near the end, when Angela finally captures another man that she is happy again. (Sorry if I’ve ruined the ending there, but you can see it coming a mile off so I haven’t done a huge disservice.). I found myself feeling far more sympathetic towards Angela’s ex-husband and nest-flown daughter – I’d have left her too.

SkyCity Theatre
June 5-26 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

WRITTEN by the father-daughter team of Roger and Pip Hall, Who Needs Sleep Anyway? is a fast paced and rather predictable romp through the trials and tribulations of parenthood, with Plunket (that’s a capital P to you) always hovering nearby. The Halls take care to say, “it’s not a play, it’s an entertainment”, and taken with this in mind, it’s a nice night out. As the puns and lame jokes fall thick and fast those looking for depth should best look elsewhere, but as a piece of entertainment, it’s not too bad.

Happy
May 27-31 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

Songs of Hollow Hill is a musical romp through old-style faerie land. The short, cutesy piece, written and conceived by Toi Whakaari graduate Natalie Medlock, picks up on the fantasy fairy genre and narrates the sad, gruff and sometimes humorous story of two outcast fairytale characters and their love-hate relationship.

Gryphon Theatre
May 21-31 | Reviewed by Melody Nixon

THIS Phillip Mann production of John Whiting’s The Devils is a smoothly rendered piece, highly stylised while remaining clear and understandable. Whiting’s seventeenth century language has been simplified to a much more encompassing modern version, allowing viewers to focus on the action and plot of the play, rather than the script. The terse and poetic imagery of Mann’s direction and Keren Chiaroni’s set design combine effectively with the wit and ‘conceit’ of what is in essence a long and emotionally complex play, with an enormous cast and some tricky layers of deception. The fact that Mann, Meredith Dooley and cast manage to pull off a version of The Devils that is plausible, comprehensible and affecting, especially in the first two Acts, is a testament to their combined talent and abilities.

BATS Theatre
May 27-June 11 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

Guardians is a play comprised of the monologues of two characters identified only as “American Girl”, and “English Boy”, a London journalist aspiring to write for the Guardian. The story of American Girl is loosely based on that of Lynndie England, who was convicted of misconduct in the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. At the point of the play she is awaiting trial in an American jail, costumed in bright prison overalls. The story of the British journalist is based on a 2004 scandal at The Daily Mirror, where a fabricated photograph depicting Iraqi abuse at British soldiers’ hands was published and then exposed as a fake. Taking this well know factual background, playwright Peter Morris crafts a work that explores sexual and cultural politics in the face of a scandal and the nature of victimisation.

Circa Theatre
May 10-June 14 | Reviewed by Helen Sims

THE CIRCA production of The American Pilot is a New Zealand production of a play written by a Scottish born playwright which is set in a nameless village, clearly somewhere in the Middle East or Balkans, which critiques American foreign policy. It’s a slightly bewildering multinational experience as a result. An American pilot, who consistently repeats his credentials, crash lands in an unnamed country (I thought it was most likely to be Afghanistan) that is rent by civil war. The blonde Southerner named Jason Reinhardt seems more concerned about the fate of his IPod than the villagers who appear to hold his life in the balance. The village he has crashed near is fighting in opposition to the side backed by America. Unable to walk, he is brought to a barn by the poor farmer who finds him. His fate is then up to the local captain of the rebel forces, who oscillates between the options of killing him or ransoming him, aided by his translator. The farmer, his wife and their daughter, as well as a local trader and the captain’s translator all enter the mix with their own views on the figure of the pilot and his fate. Clearly the point is that when America gets involved, it is the local people that end up worse off. The irony in that it is the American pilot who is seemingly the victim. However, they are each in turn infected by their brush with America; as one character informs the other “America has happened to you.”

Maidment Theatre
May 30-June 21 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

“MORALITY has no home”, proclaims the tagline of this epic production by Silo Theatre, but in its own twisted way this tale of debauched gangsters and petty hoes has a morality all of its own. Brecht never wrote theatre as spectacle alone. He intended always to challenge the audience, often by inducing a discordance in their viewing, and director Michael Hurst has succeeded admirably in this.