Camping at Circa

While lots of Welling­to­ni­ans are off hol­i­day­ing in remote parts of the coun­try (hud­dling under can­vas, find­ing sand­bags to keep the creek out, hop­ing the car­a­van does­n’t blow away) Cir­ca The­atre have kind­ly brought the camp site to those of us who stayed at home — in the form of Dave Arm­strong’s new play The Motor Camp.

The Red­mond fam­i­ly have arrived at The Wind­mill Motor Camp after a tir­ing six hour dri­ve from Welling­ton. Frank (Tim Spite) is what used to be known as a Teacher’s Col­lege lec­tur­er, now a kind of sec­ond-class cit­i­zen at the Uni­ver­si­ty. His wife Jude (Danielle Mason) is a high fly­er — run­ning the entire Arts fac­ul­ty — and teenage daugh­ter Hol­ly (Flo­rence Mul­heron) is reluc­tant­ly along for what she hopes will be her last hol­i­day with the fam­i­ly.

The Wind­mill seems to be run along strict, almost mil­i­tary, lines by an unseen Dutch tyrant named Zon­n­eveld (a con­sis­tent­ly fun­ny voice over from Cees Ebskamp) and the Red­monds are asked to set up their car­a­van far too close to the His­lop-Tairoa clan next door. Mike His­lop (Phil Vaugh­an) is a builder and all round dag, Dawn (Olivia Vio­let Robin­son) keeps the books for his busi­ness and tries to keep Mike going in one direc­tion and their teenage son Jared (Antho­ny Young) helps around the camp while shy­ly attract­ing plen­ty of female atten­tion.

So, here we have a clas­sic Arm­strong-ian set­up — a poten­tial clash of class­es, races, sex­es and ages — and an equal­ly clas­sic pay­off: noth­ing is quite as it seems and every­one would appear to have a secret. Arm­strong’s usu­al anti-PC schtick invari­ably dis­guis­es a pow­er­ful sense of right and wrong — he attacks prej­u­dice by show­ing what an unsat­is­fac­to­ry way it is to look at the world, not by rant­i­ng at us.

The pro­duc­tion, direct­ed by Dan­ny Mul­heron who also pro­vid­ed the bones of the sto­ry, plays up the humour — the two guys, Spite and Vaugh­an, get all the best moments — but I won­der whether there were more oppor­tu­ni­ties for pathos or whether more could have been made of the oppor­tu­ni­ties that were there. Arm­strong and Mul­heron build us up to a hell of a dra­mat­ic con­clu­sion where the two fam­i­lies could eas­i­ly (and in a dif­fer­ent play prob­a­bly would have) implod­ed but in less than a heart­beat we get a not par­tic­u­lar­ly cred­i­ble end­ing and a cur­tain call and then we’re on our way home.

Which is a shame because Arm­strong uses impec­ca­ble plot­ting tal­ent to get to that point. Seeds are care­ful­ly sewn, events are cun­ning­ly fore­shad­owed and even the many gags don’t go to waste as he scores points on top­ics as diverse as phon­ics and fish­ing.

Spite and Mason spark well togeth­er even if they might be a lit­tle too young for their roles. Vaugh­an has superb nat­ur­al tim­ing and a great look but was some­times not that easy to hear and Robin­son does­n’t real­ly have enough to do as her char­ac­ter is the least round­ed of the cast. The kids are great: Flo­rence Mul­heron is a total­ly recog­nis­able petu­lant teen and Young is effec­tive by not doing much — he’s a calm, cen­tre of the storm going on around him but it’s a char­ac­ter-dri­ven calm — not an actor not act­ing (if that makes sense).

Dave Arm­strong is a Welling­ton trea­sure. He hides a good heart behind a cyn­i­cal exte­ri­or and is the only play­wright I know con­sis­tent­ly writ­ing about New Zealand soci­ety as it real­ly is — and doing it with plen­ty of laugh­ter. The Motor Camp is a fun night out, def­i­nite­ly not dis­pos­able the­atre, but it lets itself down with a too easy end­ing.