I once again embarked on the odys­sey that seems to be one of Kickin’ Rad/Soap Fact­ory’s Fringe schticks these days – an impro­vised soap opera, set in Wel­ling­ton, with a cast of ten and new epis­odes on the hour every hour from 1–11pm.

Hav­ing stumbled exhaustedly but also with a great sense of excite­ment from the ten hour epic that was their last long-form soap opera (Mir­ror Miramar, Fringe 2018), I was incred­ibly keen to see what this group of tal­en­ted Wel­ling­ton impro­visers would have up their sleeves.

And I was not at all dis­ap­poin­ted, stick­ing around for the entirety of the bizarre, hil­ari­ous, and often quite touch­ing show.

Drs. Shelly (Jen O’Sul­li­van) and Evans (Matt Pow­ell) Bay own NZ’s lead­ing anim­al hos­pit­al. For the most part, this goes very well for them (there’s a dash of revolu­tion around about epis­ode six – we’ll get to that later).

They’re joined by a cast of lively and soap-appro­pri­ate char­ac­ters.

There’s a hint of romance brew­ing between lovelorn ambu­lance officer Pam Hamm (Christine Brooks) and nurse Jake Remore (Wiremu Tuhi­wai) but it’s dashed to the rocks when Pam ends up with chief of oper­a­tions Greta Point (Clare Ker­ris­on) after a par­tic­u­larly poignant degust­a­tion menu and a few too many glasses of port. Pam, how­ever, is not lovelorn for long, end­ing the ten epis­odes with three people after her heart; Remore, Point, and wealthy Pol­ish donor Laars (Lyn­don Hood, after his first char­ac­ter was killed off by mutant roost­ers).

After sur­vey­ing the audi­ence, Pam decides, that she should love her­self instead, much to our cheers and applause.

Recep­tion­ist Dami­an Raven (Sam Irwin) gets a little too big for his boots after get­ting lost in the cata­combs of the hos­pit­al and decides to com­mit some fraud. He weaves in and out of the main plot, occa­sion­al ant­ag­on­ist, but mostly just there for his cross­word.

Fisho­lo­gist Charlie Boothroyd (Jonny Paul) has lost touch with the sea, and def­in­itely does­n’t have daddy issues. It sure is con­veni­ent that his fath­er – he dis­cov­ers – is the hos­pit­al­’s anim­al chap­lain Keith Grant (Steph­en Young­blood), who spends most of the sea­son run­ning away from that fact. They do recon­cile, in the end, but it’s a near thing.  Keith takes off on a whirl­wind romance with Dr Sam Shep­pard, who spouts anim­al facts when she’s nervous, and the pair get mar­ried at the end.

It is not just saucy entan­gle­ments in the world of Bay’s Ana­tomy, but true hos­pit­al! drama! too. The med­ic­al team give an octopus a cat­fish heart trans­plant – to much suc­cess, Sam loses an eye to a lion but is her sight is saved by the prac­tise’s best sur­geon, Shelly Bay, and Dami­an com­mits, in his own words, “a shit­ton of fraud.”

Once nervous, but quickly quite mani­ac­al sales­man Kea Fal­con (Lyn­don Hood’s first char­ac­ter), loses sight of his busi­ness goals, nearly loses his job, and then kid­naps Pam, set­ting off the show’s kid­nap­ping plot, which is wrapped up in under an epis­ode. Kea is killed, very grue­somely, by Pam’s mutant roost­ers, which I assumed were just throwaway jokes at the start of the show but came into their own after ten epis­odes, basic­ally becom­ing char­ac­ters in their own right.

The entire sea­son is under­scored by Gill Grilligan (Liam Kelly), a salty sea dog turned bartender/musician, who provides a fant­ast­ic soundtrack to the show, as well as some gor­geous sea shanties. It’s all very fit­ting for a show set some­where in the vicin­ity of Kil­birnie.

Some addi­tion­al high­lights from this ten hour odys­sey -

- Many Freu­di­an slips, some of which were clearly not inten­tion­al.

- The entire clin­ic, bar­ring Shelly and Evans, decid­ing to take their work­place from their oppress­ors and start a revolu­tion, which mostly seemed to involve the drink­ing of many bev-er-rauges from Gill’s Grill. VIVA LA REVOLUTION (the work­ers were right).

- The life. death, exhuma­tion and slight mutil­a­tion of Ana­stas­ia, the clin­ic’s Rus­si­an Blue cat.

- Sam com­ing on stage eat­ing gradu­ally more and more weird things, cul­min­at­ing in a can of Chef in the final epis­ode, throw­ing pro­ceed­ings off for sev­er­al minutes.

 

Bay’s Ana­tomy was ridicu­lous fun, and a true under­tak­ing. The right blend of satir­ic­al and heart­felt, I can­not ima­gine the energy that went into impro­vising for nearly ten hours and keep­ing a logic­al plot straight. Major kudos to the per­formers and crew.

I was very com­mit­ted to the roost­er storyline, and I had one hell of a good time.