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.