I’ve nev­er seen a show at the zoo before, but that’s where Pro­fess­or Wild Returns takes me for my first review of NZ Fringe 2023. Anoth­er entry in the incred­ible Aus­tin Har­ris­on The­at­ric­al Uni­verse, this solo show resur­rects Har­ris­on’s seg­ment ‘Pro­fess­or Wild’ from What Now in 2009 as a full-length show for adults, set amongst the climbs of the Wild Theatre at Wel­ling­ton Zoo. Due to be per­formed at last year’s Fringe, but cov­an­celled, we finally got to catch this work for one night only in Fringe 2023.

Dressed in an iter­a­tion of a safari suit and hat, Aus­tin’s energy com­pletely fills the large space, and we are utterly buoyed along with it as we’re drawn into a vari­ety of seg­ments. This ver­sion of Pro­fess­or Wild isn’t here to talk about the four-legged anim­als we might expect, but rather – ourselves!

Dur­ing songs with dubi­ously-APRA’d ref­er­ences, to an inter­view with Aus­tin’s grand­moth­er, who is sit­ting two seats along from mine, and a series of vign­ettes about a Reg­u­lar Christ­ch­urch Prim­ate try­ing to get his end away in a bar, the entire show takes on a some­what sur­real turn.

The songs in par­tic­u­lar – fea­tur­ing oper­at­or Camp­bell Wright as a liv­ing mic stand – really fla­voured the piece with a kind of chil­drens’ tele­vi­sion nos­tal­gia. Yes, this was abso­lutely a work for adults, but I, and I’m sure oth­ers in the audi­ence def­in­itely felt like we were hark­ing back to our What Now days at points.

The use of the digit­al screen at the back of the stage, a hol­d­over from (pre­sum­ably) the theatre’s main use as a lec­ture space, is lit up for most of the show with memes and video seg­ments that allude to the work’s his­tory – one that’s four­teen years in the mak­ing. You can­’t often say that about a per­former in their 20s.

A wander up the zoo path, the Wild Theatre is an odd con­creted space, but works very well for a theatre show. With the power of Aus­tin’s stage pres­ence, noth­ing is lost, and myself and the audi­ence find ourselves cheer­ing fre­quently. One hol­d­over from the loc­a­tion, how­ever, is the scream­ing of anim­als about halfway through the show. “It’s just the lemurs hav­ing sex,” Aus­tin says, “Just ignore it,” and so he con­tin­ues, utterly undeterred des­pite the vera­city of anim­al noise, which goes on for about five minutes.

Aside from the con­tent of the work, which I did see as both hil­ari­ous and inform­at­ive, what I really appre­ci­ated about Pro­fess­or Wild Returns was the under­ly­ing thread of kind­ness that ran through­out the show – one that I know was fostered due to Aus­tin’s affin­ity for crowd work.

Des­pite the nar­ciss­ism, des­pite the sar­casm, des­pite all we’ve done wrong – the show’s final mes­sage was one that really stuck with me: tell your friends you love them, tell your­self that too (even if it’s hard), and give that love to the world around you. A moment of hope that par­tic­u­larly res­on­ated with me con­sid­er­ing the con­text of this week (extreme flood­ing in my homet­own), and one I left the theatre truly feel­ing.

What a beau­ti­ful wist­ful open­er to NZ Fringe 2023. Thank you for gift­ing us with this.