Sepia coloured photo of Geenty in a checkshirt, hat with ear flaps and a spade across his shouldersCraig Geenty comes from a large and exten­ded fam­ily. They’re gregari­ous. They like a bit of a drink. They’ve been whis­per­ing about a fam­ily secret for years. Great-grand­fath­er Joseph is still offi­cially miss­ing after dis­ap­pear­ing on his way back home after mak­ing a deliv­ery in town in 1921. Did he crash? Did he run away? Was he murdered?

Geenty, wear­ing a check shirt, tights, and a cap with ear flaps wel­comes us at the door and invites us to join him in a beer tast­ing. It’s the first indic­a­tion of how mul­tiple levels of con­nec­tion are woven through the show. Each of the renamed four beers* serve as a new chapter in the story of how his grand­par­ents (plus great-great and great) met. He reflects on his own per­son­al­ity and links it back to sim­il­ar exper­i­ences his ancest­ors went through. It’s part storytelling, part melo­dra­mat­ic mime, part gene­a­lo­gic­al explor­a­tion – with dan­cing. There are a lot of names and time­frames to keep track of so plant pots are used to stand in for people. Light­ing helps to define dif­fer­ent timelines.

The main focus is the miss­ing per­son mys­tery. It’s an inter­est­ing thing to be part of an audi­ence where the per­former is describ­ing con­tra­dict­ory stor­ies about indi­vidu­als and there are oth­er related indi­vidu­als in the audi­ence with you. Around the laughter and beer tast­ing, Geenty asks ques­tions of mas­culin­ity, drink­ing cul­ture in isol­ated New Zea­l­and rur­al areas, and how fam­ily secrets and choices echo through the gen­er­a­tions. Very good.

* From Hey­day Beer Co., 264 Cuba Street.