Mincing

Min­cing is a joy and I abso­lutely loved it.

Jimini Jolly Snr (Tom Sains­bury) runs the best butchery in Timaru, along­side his wife Marge-Irine (Kura For­res­t­er), their son Jimini Jnr (Chris Park­er) and their daugh­ter Nicole (Bryn­ley Stent). Jimini Jnr is off to New York to go to tap school, Marge-Irine is on a jaunt across Italy, and Nicole wants to go to Towns­ville to make fem­in­ist cup­cakes and zines. How­ever, the money’s gotta come from some­where, and Jimini Snr is obliged to stay at home to fund his fam­ily’s lav­ish trips.

But, not all is fresh in the Jollys’ world, and some­thing is rot­ten in the butchery. You’ll just have to see the show to find out what.

This story is fun for the whole fam­ily – all lathered with fol­low­ing your dreams and true life advice – until you come to all the incest (ish?), murder (??) and adul­tery going on. It’s a Shakespearean tale, com­plete with all the trim­mings.

Chris Park­er­’s ‘Raphael’ – the dre­am­boat with a truly mag­ni­fi­cent wig and an inter­est­ing take on an Itali­an accent – was a spe­cial high­light of mine, and I loved the cast’s fant­ast­ic com­mit­ment to the ridicu­lous bits. Play­ing at least two char­ac­ters each – some­times more – we got to see the cast truly stretch their act­ing muscles, and it was a pleas­ure to see so much tal­ent on show.

It’s a delight to see per­formers really have fun on stage, and some­times it felt like they were laugh­ing as much as we were.

I’m going to see it again (and you abso­lutely should too).

 

Min­cing is on at BATS Theatre until Sat­urday the 18th of May. Get your tick­ets from the BATS web­site!