Hap­py 13th  birth­day to The Bac­cha­nals! They are throw­ing us the sur­prise par­ty, leav­ing behind their ‘serious/politically con­sci­en­tious’ plays in order to be ‘sil­ly & have fun’.  The Clouds is sil­ly and heaps of fun while still con­tain­ing polit­i­cal and social com­men­tary. The Bac­cha­nals are grow­ing up, but not away from their roots. (As a bonus (for me) I was at the play with a friend and his 13 year old son. )

In the play, Dad is in debt and is in dan­ger of los­ing the house the car the spa etc if he does­n’t find the mon­ey to pay it all by tomor­row. He wants his son- a ‘horse lover’ — to go to uni­ver­si­ty to become a law-yer in order to argue his way out of the debt. His son is not inter­est­ed and so Dad goes him­self. It does­n’t go so well (or rather, it goes too well) so the son agrees to become a lawyer. He after lis­tens to Right and Wrong argue their case and then picks a side…

There are asides dur­ing the play either to explain or aug­ment the script. There are ref­er­ences to NZ cas­es and Welling­ton insti­tu­tions.  There are dad jokes. There are sex­u­al jokes. There is polit­i­cal and social com­men­tary pok­ing fun at almost every­thing.  The inter­pre­ta­tion you’ll make depends on your polit­i­cal lean­ings. (Appar­ent­ly this is tra­di­tion­al!) The dodgy humour and con­tent amused the 13-year-old no end.

N.B. Tick­ets are sell­ing well so book online!