Reviewed by Shauwn Keil.

Upon enter­ing the the­atre, we are treat­ed to a mag­nif­i­cent set, designed by Jas­mine Bry­ham. Every­thing that reminds you of Nana and Pop­pa’s house is present. Jars of God knows what across the kitchen bench. A ket­tle and cool mugs. Din­ner set items. A paua shell ash­tray on a shelf on the right. News­pa­per spread on the larg­er table. Even a cheeky sewing kit pre­tend­ing to be a bis­cuit tin. The set invokes nos­tal­gia for me, and com­bined with the lit­tle more than ambi­ent nature sounds (pre­sum­ably put togeth­er by com­pos­er Raven Har­vey-Lomas) I feel like I’m prob­a­bly sit­ting in a rur­al New Zealand home rather than next to the K‑Fry on Cam­bridge Ter­race. The lights (Matilde Vad­seth Furholm) feel quite eerie, I’ll say now that this is main­tained through the course of the pro­duc­tion with very lit­tle changes to the light­ing. You are held in one state for the most part with­out a black­out, and for my taste per­son­al­ly, it’s a fit­ting and excel­lent choice. Any­way, I’m look­ing too far for­ward. I’m sit­ting there like “woah, I can’t wait to see how we go.”

The play does start in the dark, and we first meet Saman­tha and Richard Hale, played by Abby Lyons and Oliv­er Knott respec­tive­ly. The first things I notice are a preg­nant baby bel­ly, one that Lyons sus­tains the effects of per­fect­ly through­out the pro­duc­tions entire­ty, and a bit of word slur­ring. As dic­tion picks up for the most part car­ry­ing on, I can look at this, per­haps, as a shared actors choice of show­ing the giv­en cir­cum­stances of arriv­ing late and being tired. There is a gag of bang­ing the small table set up ear­ly, which I’m a suck­er for — though I crave more sur­prise.

Three oth­er char­ac­ters make their way on to the stage, and sad­ly this is where I start to see per­for­mance clash­es, con­fus­ing the over­all style a lit­tle. Con­sta­ble David (Sean Bur­nett-Dug­dale Mar­tin) and Offi­cer Mur­ray (Will Toon) make for a good dumb and dumb­er cop pair­ing. Sean in par­tic­u­lar holds an impres­sive and res­o­nant voice, com­mand­ing atten­tion in all of his moments on stage. I felt, how­ev­er, that while these char­ac­ters earned a bit of lev­i­ty and defused ten­sion well in moments that were nec­es­sary, less car­i­ca­ture would have made for a more cohe­sive per­for­mance between the cast. I did not feel like they were quite from the same world and as a result, some moments of ten­sion were missed in favour of humor that did­n’t land.

As dra­ma unfolds, it is love­ly to watch life exist around the main focus. Sam and Angela Peters (Ottilie Bleack­ley, also Dra­maturg) mak­ing tea in the kitchen while the nar­ra­tive con­tin­ues is a great exam­ple of keep­ing the world alive beyond the dia­logue we hear from anoth­er char­ac­ter. I would even ask for more oppor­tu­ni­ties like this. Could a char­ac­ter be read­ing the news­pa­per and check­ing back in to the con­ver­sa­tion once in a while? Did that pot want to go back in to the sink? Even so, it’s small things like mak­ing a cup­pa that rein­force the idea of a nat­u­ral­is­tic set­ting. This gets a gold­en tick.

Any­way, we get our first light­ing change while the sto­ry plays out a sil­hou­ette on a black cur­tain with a tung­sten back light. A beau­ti­ful effect, miss­ing a lit­tle ener­gy. Sharon Wright (Lily Wright, also Cos­tume Design­er) holds our focus in these sil­hou­ette moments, play­ing out the tragedy. What’s con­sis­tent in each return to the sil­hou­ette is rush­ing. As we don’t get to see what is being react­ed to, just a lit­tle more air around the actors dis­cov­er­ies would chill our bones all the more. Future red light and spooky sound set this up nice­ly, we just need that third part of the unholy trin­i­ty for a tru­ly mem­o­rable moment.

Men­tions of Coun­try Cal­en­dar, Face­book, Cell­phones and the over­all aes­thet­ic of the play leave me uncer­tain of what time peri­od we are in — it’s pos­si­ble I missed a direct men­tion. But I won’t push on through the entire sto­ry. I will say that I found this adap­ta­tion to be won­der­ful on paper. Alia Mar­shall (Writer, Direc­tor) has craft­ed a beau­ti­ful piece touch­ing on sex­ism in rur­al New Zealand, and real­ly, in gen­er­al. Not only the tox­ic dis­plays of it from the fuzz and Dick, but the heart-break­ing effects that it has on the women shown in con­ver­sa­tion.

I’m not just talk­ing about the “you should smile more” fedo­ra type (not that that does­n’t total­ly suck either), I mean the intense stuff you wince at and strug­gle to imag­ine because you don’t think you have any male friends who would be capa­ble of it. Being able to see con­ver­sa­tions take place on the sub­ject only to be brought down when the men return real­ly irks me, in a way that I believe it was meant to. My friend com­ment­ed that he did­n’t feel like these prob­lems exist any­more and that there’s lit­tle point address­ing them with­out a solu­tion. “How much aware­ness can you bring if you don’t have an answer?” I could­n’t dis­agree more and we debat­ed this for a good while after the show. While he was­n’t on board, I think it’s impor­tant for peo­ple in that mind­set to view such con­tent, in fact, I’d go a step fur­ther and say that they need it the most. The­atre chal­lenges and we need more audi­ences to chal­lenge — scary as that may seem.

The block­ing is dope, I got a good sense of the direc­tor’s vision and choic­es made through the inten­tion­al block­ing. All I could ask for is a bit more com­mit­ment at times from actors to move with the same intent. I know I am being quite picky in the per­for­mance depart­ment, and it comes from a place of see­ing the high poten­tial of this play and how much fur­ther a team effort could have brought the pro­duc­tion. Make no mis­take, I enjoyed my time in the the­atre and I’ll reit­er­ate that the script was fan­tas­tic. I think the main thing is uni­fy­ing the cast on what we are want­i­ng to achieve, mak­ing sure we are gen­er­ous actors sell­ing anoth­er scene part­ner’s per­for­mance in our reac­tions rather than look­ing for our own glo­ri­ous moments in them, and fight­ing the urge to rush. Even in moments of pause, a lit­tle breath­ing would­n’t go amiss. Every­thing is already there to turn this play from good to great, and great to tru­ly mem­o­rable.

This was the clos­ing per­for­mance of Trifles at BATS The­atre, and it was abun­dant­ly clear that the team put a lot of heart in to this pro­duc­tion. Crit­i­cisms aside, I could­n’t help but smile with them all dur­ing the bows, it was one of the sweet­est things I’d seen. I would sin­cere­ly love to catch anoth­er ver­sion of this play, and I look for­ward to see­ing future works from Heart­break­er Pro­duc­tions. Peace homie.