This head­ing is not totally accur­ate as one of the shows con­sists of four dif­fer­ent shows. You only need to buy one tick­et to see the four shows, so for two tick­ets you can see five shows. Con­fused? Wel­come to the reviews for Stages of Cheer  and A Christ­mas Karel Čapek at BATS Theatre!

(Bring a can of food or an unwrapped new gift to donate to The Wel­ling­ton City Mis­sion and receive your tick­ets at the con­ces­sion price OR grab the two for one vouch­er from the Wel­ling­ton Advent Cal­en­dar.)

 

Review: Stages of cheer: four fest­ive plays

The four fest­ive plays have been inspired by Christ­mas, but they all have a slightly absurd twist to them. First up is Dav­id Klein in ‘It’s an Infin­ite Christ­mas!’ This is a rather lovely explor­a­tion of physics/philosophy, spe­cific­ally the mul­ti­verse the­ory. Klein’s meas­ured present­a­tion is off­set by nice touches of the­at­ric­al­ity. It’s a good intro­duc­tion to the even­ing. Next up is Big Lies with ‘Cross­bow Cat’. Josephine Byrnes and Abby How­ells star in this cross-spe­cies drama about a revenge and redemp­tion. Byrnes and How­ells per­form the roller-coast­er of emo­tions their char­ac­ters go through very well with the power in the rela­tion­ship (I use that term loosely) shift­ing con­stantly. After a short inter­val we’re back with Mak­ing Friends Col­lect­ive with ‘Ali­en Cus­toms’. We watch the struggle between Dr Orno and Officer Ramphy who wants to get her pro­cessed so he can go home and cel­eb­rate Rodan Beak­ing­ton Day. Unfor­tu­nately Dr Orno may be bring­ing in banned mater­i­al. Tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas dec­or­a­tions are examined and explained. Har­riet Hughes and Andrew Clarke are fine pup­pet­eers and the pup­pets by Anna Stu­art are very cute. Finally, Apple Box Brand presents ‘How to Plan a Per­fect Christ­mas’. Sasha Tilly per­forms as Tasha in a semi-impro­vised play about the sad­der side to Christ­mas while dir­ect­or Jake Brown offers sug­ges­tions from the light­ing box. There’s some singing and tips to make Christ­mas day cel­eb­ra­tions go as well as pos­sible. Tilly is charm­ing so it’s nice that the play ends on a pos­it­ive note. Mc-ing all the way through is Santa Claus (played very well on open­ing night by Jonny Paul.)

All profits from Stages of Cheer will be donated to Wel­ling­ton Women’s Refuge and Te Whare Rokiroki, Maori Women’s Refuge.

 

Review: A Christ­mas Karel Čapek by Dav­id Lawrence (with thanks to Charles Dick­ens, Karel Capek, Isaac Asimov)

Dav­id and Bri­anne are anti­cip­at­ing Christ­mas – Bri­anne with joy and excite­ment, and Dav­id with more than a little mis­an­thropy. In order to escape from his Christ­mas respons­ib­il­it­ies, Dav­id builds a robot. He‘s going to get the robot to do all the things he doesn’t want to do like inter­act­ing with oth­er people.  Bri­anne is appalled. The robot could do so many won­der­ful things; it could save human­ity, and, and…the pan­das!

Trouble ensues.

Fol­low­ing the struc­ture of A Christ­mas Car­ol by Dick­ens there are all the shenanigans of a reg­u­lar Bac­chanals show – songs, in-jokes, a little bit of polit­ic­al com­ment­ary, and self-ref­er­en­tial meta-the­at­ric­al gags. Dav­id Lawrence and Bri­anne Kerr play exag­ger­ated ver­sions of them­selves with hil­ari­ous res­ults. They know exactly how to stretch a moment in order to wring the most com­edy from it. Salesi Leota is out­stand­ing as the nar­rat­ive con­nect­or who links the scenes togeth­er although I think he’d prob­ably have to com­pete with Jean Ser­gent for the most pop­u­lar char­ac­ter in this show.

While you’ll get the most enjoy­ment if you know a bit about the Bac­chanals, their pre­vi­ous plays, and Wel­ling­ton Theatre, but there’s enough sil­li­ness and fun even if you know noth­ing about these things. I recom­mend eat­ing before you go. (And you should go.)