She Danced on a Fri­day is a spir­itu­ally evoc­at­ive and heart­break­ing play about a Hamilton murder in the early 1990s. Hav­ing only been in the coun­try for four days, 32-year old Mar­gery Hope­good was stabbed to death in a pub­lic toi­let on the 10th of Janu­ary, 1992. She was­n’t here for an OE, but to meet some fam­ily friends – includ­ing the Sal­va­tion Army work­er who helped put her up for adop­tion so many years pre­vi­ously.

How­ever, she nev­er made it.

Nic­ola Paul­ing – whose grand­moth­er had organ­ised Mar­gery’s adop­tion – takes to the stage in this one-woman show and utterly shines as a vari­ety of char­ac­ters in Mar­gery’s life. From Mar­gery her­self, to her birth moth­er, to her tem­por­ary moth­er, we’re drawn emo­tion­ally through Mar­gery’s life from a baby in Hamilton until her death on her return. Paul­ing takes on char­ac­ters with all the ease of slip­ping on a dress – some­times char­ac­ters change with­in one or two lines of dia­logue, and each is as dis­tinct and power­ful as the last.

It’s clear that the sub­ject is very close to Paul­ing’s heart – every line car­ries a cer­tain authen­ti­city – likely from the extens­ive inter­view­ing and research put into this devised piece, and Paul­ing’s per­son­al con­nec­tion to the story.

It is a gut-wrench­ing, emo­tion­al work – espe­cially the moments when Mar­gery finds her end to an acous­tic ver­sion of Rod Stew­art’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It (the last song listened to on her Walk­man the day she died) and it will abso­lutely leave you in tears.

Though She Danced on a Fri­day may leave you with more ques­tions than answers, it is an impec­cably well-craf­ted work and def­in­itely worth see­ing on stage.

She Danced on a Fri­day is being per­formed at BATS Theatre in Wel­ling­ton until the 15th of Septem­ber 2018. Get your tick­ets from here!