Has it really been a year since I last reviewed an inter­a­tion of Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments? Appar­ently so. The polit­ic­al satire is back, mix­ing COVID, con­tro­versy, and Elec­tion Night into one wild and very timely show.

Our act­ors take the stage with a par­ody of a well-known ABBA song, now rebranded as “MMP”. This trend of soun-alikes will con­tin­ue for the rest of the piece, cul­min­at­ing in a par­ody of the Game of Thrones theme as one of the politi­cians (I bet you can­’t guess who) rises from smoke at the top of the stage.

It’s been an abso­lutely hell year, both in polit­ics and in the real world, but Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments seems to take it in its stride, com­ment­ing on things that barely even happened a week ago in the polit­ic­al news cycle with alac­rity and pres­ci­ence.

Jacinda Ardern (Han­nah Kelly) is basic­ally run­ning a cult, Judith Collins (Johanna Cos­grove) is turn­ing all the mem­bers of her party into vam­pires and Dav­id Sey­mour (Sepelini Mua’au) is recruit­ing strangers off the street to join his party. James Shaw (Simon Leary) has star­ted smoking an abso­lute shit-ton of weed, Win­ston Peters (Matu Ngaropo) has got­ten into some sweet dance moves and Marama Dav­id­son (Nee­nah Dek­kers-Reihana) is try­ing des­per­ately to get her party in line.

It’s all very good.

But that’s the thing with PSA, it’s always qual­ity writ­ing and excel­lent fun. Though depend­ent on your age you might not hit on all the jokes – there was one line about incels that I sus­pect I’m the only one who laughed at it – it’s a very good time, and you’ll def­in­itely enjoy it.

There’s a delight­ful kind of weird­ness to this show, an air of eso­ter­ica – Chloe Swar­brick has been pos­sessed, Shane Jones is slowly mutat­ing into some kind of hom­un­cu­lus, Dav­id Sey­mour seems to live in a recyc­ling bin, and we’re not even going to start on the vam­pires – but it’s satire that hits, and it hits well. The per­form­ances are recog­nis­able, and very strong – Cos­groves’ Collins being a note­able standout with her Wicked Witch of the West-esque vibes – and every­one seems to be hav­ing a very good time.

Like I said in last year’s review, Nation­al still wants to fuck roads.

(True to life there, then.)

My only regret is that I did­n’t get addi­tion­al tick­ets, because PSA is the kind of show you could see mul­tiple times and still pick up new things. It’s sold out, but you can go on the waitl­ist by con­tact­ing them.

What a bloody good time.