Robert’s moth­er Olivia has died unex­pect­ed­ly and he’s returned from New York for her funer­al. His grand­moth­er Joan is pleased he’s back as she’s dev­as­tat­ed by her daughter’s death. Joan has been a big part of Robert’s life since his father Tofi walked out before he was born. A lit­tle bit of courage will get them through the funer­al and the wake…until Tofi arrives to pay his respects. All bets are off as Joan releas­es years of resent­ment.

Vic­tor Rodger has writ­ten a fast paced play which is an explorato­ry roller­coast­er of love and hate. Insults fly and too much infor­ma­tion (accord­ing to the char­ac­ters) is shared. The main per­pe­tra­tor is Joan played by Lisa Har­row mak­ing her Welling­ton stage debut. Har­row is an expe­ri­enced actor with a long career on stage and screen and this shows in how she por­trays the two sides of Joan — unapolo­getic strong-mind­ed diva and grief-filled moth­er. She deliv­ers vicious lines with spir­it and great com­ic tim­ing. The tar­get of her vit­ri­ol is absent father Tofi, played by Jerome Leo­ta with a care­ful delib­er­ate man­ner. He gives Tofi a slip­pery gen­tle­ness that changes just when you think you’ve got a han­dle on who the char­ac­ter is. New­com­er Mar­co Alo­sio is grand­son Robert. Alo­sio exter­nalis­es his character’s anx­i­ety as he con­stant­ly fid­gets with his jack­et or walks around rest­less­ly. He’s at his best dur­ing some of the lat­er scenes where he’s fight­ing to keep con­trol.

Direc­tor Jane Yonge sets up some visu­al­ly love­ly scenes and has worked to ensure the cast make the most of the quick-fire com­ic dia­logue. The audi­ence responds by sit­ting on the edges of their seats, or by lean­ing as far back as pos­si­ble as if to get fur­ther away from the racist insults on stage. There’s a lot of laugh­ter and some gasps and hiss­es. Sean Coyle has designed a beau­ti­ful set with wood pan­elling floor to wall and shiny black sides. Bare bulbs hang from the roof as part of the light­ing design from Jen­nifer Lal which turns the set from a home to a del­i­cate chapel to a soul­less hall. The seat­ing in Cir­ca One has been rearranged and rein­forces the chapel-like atmos­phere. (I real­ly like this con­tex­tu­al­i­sa­tion of the play. Also, at open­ing night we were greet­ed by a woman (pro­duc­er Tanea Heke) dressed in black just as we would at a funer­al — although I’m not sure whether this was delib­er­ate­ly part of fram­ing the per­for­mance or a cour­tesy for the unusu­al-for-Cir­ca-open­ing-night crowd.) Alex Sipahioglu has designed the sound which links scenes togeth­er and pro­vides some of the laughs.

Please do not miss this one. It’s mag­nif­i­cent and should only get bet­ter.