There are three shows on in Wel­ling­ton this week that are abso­lutely worth your time and money. An unseason­able fall of snow at Circa Theatre, and God-Belly and Everything is sur­roun­ded by water at BATS Theatre.

I feel like An unseason­able fall of snow should come with a con­tent warn­ing how­ever that would give away the twist in the nar­rat­ive so I can­’t. It’s the most visu­ally stark of the three pieces – a white, mostly bare with a table, two chairs centre stage. A small table with cof­fee is to the side. The story is that Arthur (Jed Brophy) is inter­rog­at­ing Liam (Riley Brophy) about a crime/s that he may or may not have com­mit­ted, or been a party to. Jed spends most of his time with one hand in his pock­et and the oth­er hold­ing his glasses. I found this a bit jar­ring, but it fits with his char­ac­ter as revealed late in the piece. Riley is nicely sul­len or agit­ated as Liam. The script by Gary Hende­r­son has some excel­lent oneliners. Some of the people I went with were very sur­prised by the twist  (the clues are there all the way through if you’re a sus­pi­cious audi­ence mem­ber like me.)

God-Belly is com­pletely dif­fer­ent.  The set is a square of judo mats with pack­ets of toasted crum­pets scattered around the edge. There are two stor­ies – one of Jude and her boy­friend George and their fast­ing pro­cess, and one of Sis­ter Cath­er­ine and her pen­chant for pen­ance as wit­nessed by Fath­er Ray­mond. It’s per­formed by an Auck­land duo – Rosie Tapsell and Andrew Gunn. Both extremely fit, they play mul­tiple char­ac­ters in the two stor­ies that explore faith, deni­al, accept­able obses­sions, body image, struggle, the drive to be ‘bet­ter’, and ritu­al in daily life. It’s astound­ingly phys­ic­al. It’s also wordy, funny, and heart­break­ing. This is Pres­sure Point Col­lect­ive’s first pro­duc­tion – I’m really look­ing for­ward to see­ing what this com­pany does next.

(Con­tent warn­ing for self-harm­ing beha­viours; dis­ordered eat­ing.)

Everything is sur­roun­ded by water is a good example of how some­thing simple can have a great effect. A mono­logue by Uth­er Dean and Han­nah Banks, it’s per­formed by Dean with Banks dir­ect­ing. It is one man telling us how he got his soul back but Dean is such a charm­ing storyteller that it becomes very per­son­al, even with­in the con­fines to the black­box of BATS. Altern­ately twinkly and ser­i­ous he tells us he has been dir­ec­ted to stay in the chair as he becomes too anim­ated when he stands. He warns us that things are going to get dark – and they do. (A note of appre­ci­ation to the light­ing design in this show.) A spell­bind­ing end­ing.

(Con­tent warn­ing for descrip­tions of viol­ence and sui­cid­al beha­viour.)

All three recom­men­ded view­ing.

N.B. God-Belly is 2 hours long; Everything is sur­roun­ded by water is 70 mins long. I saw them on the same night. If I had more space in my cal­en­dar I’d go to see them both again.