Skin Tight is my favourite ever play and I’ve been want­i­ng to see it per­formed since I first read it. Cir­ca The­atre did not dis­ap­point with their iter­a­tion of this show; a glo­ri­ous­ly evoca­tive piece with incred­i­ble stag­ing, per­for­mances and move­ment.

The play is not just a love sto­ry to its char­ac­ters — and the highs and lows that come with­in their lives — but a love sto­ry to the land­scape of this coun­try, the rolling moun­tains, the rivers, and the dizzy­ing snap of spring. It is this imagery that car­ries us into the piece.

A reimag­ing of Denis Glover’s poem The Mag­pies, Skin Tight sets us in an apple orchard, on a farm some­where with­in rur­al New Zealand, where two lovers find them­selves togeth­er.

Eliz­a­beth (Ella Gilbert) and Tom (Arlo Gib­son) are very much in love, and have weath­ered such grief in their lives. Our two char­ac­ters and the dia­logue dip in and out of tem­po­ral­i­ty as they fight, make-up, love, live and grow old; age­less with­in two sin­gle actor bod­ies, but with the weight of many years on their backs. Gary Hen­der­son­’s writ­ing is gor­geous, and so very real, with this per­va­sive sense of love under­cut­ting the entire­ty of the script — love that is bru­tal, and pas­sion­ate, and mourned when it is gone.

Skin Tight is a mas­ter­class in phys­i­cal the­atre. Move­ment (Luke Han­na) and inti­ma­cy (Tan­di Wright) inter­twine with­in this work, cre­at­ing a piece that almost dances through the beats of these char­ac­ters’ lives. From fight­ing — rolling on the ground, push­ing, slap­ping, bit­ing and grab­bing — to small­er, more sen­su­al pieces of inti­ma­cy, the moment is held beau­ti­ful­ly by our two actors, who per­form whol­ly com­plex phys­i­cal­i­ty across the show. There is one par­tic­u­lar scene involv­ing a knife that is one of the most dar­ing and most erot­ic things I’ve even seen staged. I dread to think the state of the actors’ bruis­es by the time this sea­son is over!

The heights of sen­su­al­i­ty that these actors must reach with­in this show would be a chal­lenge to most, but both Gilbert and Gib­son sur­pass them with (seem­ing) ease, with a pal­pa­ble chem­istry and gen­uine heart. Eliz­a­beth is cocky and quick to emote, and Tom a lit­tle more thought­ful, but both have their places with­in the work, find­ing their feet in moments about infi­deli­ty, and the War.  A strong direc­to­r­i­al hand (Kather­ine McRae) is very appar­ent, with beau­ti­ful stage pic­tures that set the piece out amongst the stark­ness of the stage.

I’d like to make a spe­cial note of the design­ers behind this show, whose work is appar­ent but sim­plis­tic, an invo­ca­tion to the notes of the land­scape but does not dis­tract from the move­ment of the piece. Brynne Tasker-Poland’s light­ing is warm, cut soft­ly across set and bod­ies; cre­at­ing inter­est­ing shad­ows on the floor, bare thighs, the back wall of the the­atre. Lucas Neal’s set is most­ly dark, geo­met­ric poles that cre­ate the shape of a build­ing, along with the infa­mous met­al bath­tub — which is filled with water across the course of the show. The music (Oliv­er Devlin) and sound design (Ben Kel­ly) are almost char­ac­ters of their own — mul­ti-dimen­sion­al but not over­pow­er­ing, per­fect notes that sup­port the fever of the fight­ing and the wist­ful­ness of the his­to­ry with­in .

The final scene of the show has no dia­logue, and is a send-off, in a way. Water falls from the ceil­ing, into the bath­tub, and the char­ac­ters strip naked, final­ly free from the trap­pings of years, to bathe togeth­er — one final sen­su­al, deeply inti­mate moment. It is near spir­i­tu­al in its fram­ing, and we are left with an old­er Tom (KC Kel­ly), step­ping out onto stage for a final moment, as his younger self sobs over his depart­ed wife behind him. He stares off into the sky. A mag­pie cries. He cuts a final slice from an apple. We rest.

Skin Tight is being per­formed at Cir­ca The­atre in Welling­ton until the 24th of Sep­tem­ber. Get your tick­ets here.