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.