Reviews of Sec­ond after­life by Ralph McCub­bin How­ell, and Not in our neigh­bour­hood by Jamie McCaskill.

Sec­ond After­life by Ralph McCub­bin How­ell

Dan is quit­ting Face­book. He’s sick of his pro­file – he’s going to delete it all. It’s not as easy as that though, is it? After wak­ing up in the sec­ond after­life, a mys­te­ri­ous Guide tells him the only way to get back to the world is to meet all his pre­vi­ous online pro­files – and defeat them in bat­tle.

The return sea­son of a Young and Hun­gry show from 2014 includes some new gags, new fight scenes and a cou­ple of new actors. Hap­pi­ly sound design­er and oper­a­tor Philip Jones is still on stage pro­vid­ing sound effects. His well-timed shenani­gans are one of the high­lights for me. Anoth­er set are the fight scenes and phys­i­cal com­e­dy. They are lib­er­al­ly scat­tered through­out the pro­duc­tion and man­age to be both well chore­o­graphed (Ricky Dey) and hilar­i­ous. The final high­light is see­ing young actors com­fort­ably tran­si­tion to a new the­atre space with the guid­ance of direc­tors Ker­ryn Palmer and Ryan Knighton.

Michael Heben­ton does a good job as the hap­less Dan, being dragged from one con­fronta­tion to anoth­er. Bron­wyn Ensor, Michael Trigg, Matthew Stai­jen, and Mahalia Sin­clair-Park­er are very good as Dan’s friends, and alter-egos. Light­ing by Tony Black shows the dif­fer­ent times and places well. It’s espe­cial­ly spooky in the first scene in the sec­ond after­life.

Ener­getic and fun.

Not in our Neigh­bour­hood by Jamie McCaskill

Maisey Mata makes a doc­u­men­tary about what hap­pens in a safe house for a women’s refuge in Thames. She meets the women in the house, and the women who sup­port them in putting their lives back togeth­er.

McCaskill wrote the script while work­ing with Te Whari­ki Man­awahine o Hau­ra­ki, a refuge in Thames. His job was to ‘advo­cate against vio­lence towards women’. He’s cho­sen to do this by show­ing the after­math of the vio­lence, rather than the vio­lence itself. It’s still there as a shad­ow over the char­ac­ters lives, but most­ly it is their dai­ly, even mun­dane, exis­tence that is shown. This makes the play more affect­ing as it allows the ongo­ing con­se­quences of vio­lence to be felt.

Kali Kopae is an incred­i­ble solo per­former. Each char­ac­ter is a dis­tinct phys­i­cal and vocal per­son­al­i­ty. It’s easy to fig­ure out who is who – from volatile, explo­sive Sasha, to cheer­ful, prac­ti­cal Moira. Sin­gle sided inter­ac­tions pro­ceed at the pace of the char­ac­ter she’s por­tray­ing at the time, while tran­si­tions between char­ac­ters hap­pen organ­i­cal­ly. A cameo appear­ance near the end of the show high­lights the insid­i­ous nature of domes­tic vio­lence and the dif­fi­cult deci­sions those who’ve faced fam­i­ly vio­lence have to make.

Well bal­anced between hilar­i­ous and poignant. Rec­om­mend­ed.