The first thing that grips me as soon as I walk into Circa Two is Lucas Neal’s gor­geous set design for this show – a huge pohu­takawa that stretches up and across the entire stage, a white pick­et fence, and the out­side edge of a tra­di­tion­al weather­board kiwi house. Cica­das chirp (beau­ti­ful sound design by Patrick Barnes), and the air feels warm and heavy – though poten­tially that’s just cause the theatre is packed.

Many, many cen­tur­ies on since the Weird Sis­ters pre­dicted Macbeth­’s future, they’ve all grown apart and settled down in Waikato. How­ever, tonight, the three are reunited to see Daphne (Helen Moulder) get mar­ried to uni­ver­sity pro­fess­or Ted (Peter Hamb­leton). Sybil (Irene Wood) is dis­missive of Daph­ne’s new man, but clearly still griev­ing over a lost love of her own, and Fay (Hil­ary Nor­ris) is wor­ried about the loss of her magic, but is seem­ingly mostly there for the canapes.

This is one of the sharpest scripts I’ve seen per­formed in recent memory. Play­wright James Cain’s wit and intel­li­gence is out in full force with­in this work, it is a fant­ast­ic­ally funny piece – a bit about famil­i­ars leaves me gig­gling def­in­itely too loudly in my seat – but it is the softer moments where this show truly shines. The Weird Sis­ters have lived so long and seen so much that the under­ly­ing thread of loss with­in the piece is palp­able. Amongst the sis­terly bick­er­ing and gripes about get­ting too old, there is a genu­ine heart with­in the work that I find very mov­ing, expertly con­veyed by our per­formers.

And what a team they are! Four per­formers with an incred­ible breadth and depth of New Zea­l­and act­ing his­tory between them. All four are a delight to watch on stage; from the gen­i­al and kindly Ted (Hamb­leton), to the guarded Sybil (Wood), deeply in love Daphne (Moulder) and wickedly chaot­ic Fay (Nor­ris). Excel­lent cast­ing, and excel­lent dir­ec­tion all round.

There’s a lot of mov­ing parts to this work, expertly har­nessed by dir­ect­or Har­riet Preb­ble. To act­ively bal­ance the many lay­ers of this play – the cur­rent moment, where Daphne and Ted are get­ting mar­ried, but also the weight of the years behind them – could be a chal­lenge, but Preb­ble’s dir­ec­tion is sol­id and clear, with some gor­geous stage pic­tures and great sta­ging.

It is such a joy to see well-writ­ten, well-roun­ded roles for women over a cer­tain age in the theatre space. Once you hit a cer­tain age as a per­former, espe­cially as a woman, roles begin to float away like leaves in the wind, leav­ing often only the crumbled rot of play­ing someone’s “grand­moth­er” or the dreaded “eld­erly lady” – with no lay­ers or dimen­sion, just someone who is there to fur­ther the nar­rat­ive of someone young­er. The Cov­en on Grey Street gives these char­ac­ters the depth they deserve, and does so by clearly and obvi­ously show­ing that there is no “one true” life exper­i­ence for someone who is older, just as there is no one true life exper­i­ence for a char­ac­ter who is young. This is deeply refresh­ing!!

The Cov­en on Grey Street is one of the bet­ter shows I’ve seen this year, per­haps the best show. I’ll not spoil the second half of the piece for you, but these witches do find their magic again, and it is def­in­itely for the bet­ter. I love a show with some prac­tic­al stage magic, and you’d bet­ter believe that comes along for the ride too. I also have a great fear, and a great admir­a­tion for some­thing thats dares to say the word “Macbeth” in the theatre as much as this play does.

(A cheeky note before I wrap this review up – you might think “I’m 20, I don’t know Circa that well, I’m not in this show’s demo­graph­ic,” and to that I say, “I’m 26, and I had a blast. Take the time for an excel­lent script and play­ers. It’s worth it.”)

Light­ing design by Isad­ora Lao, cos­tume and graph­ic design by Aimée Sul­li­van, stage man­age­ment by Deb McGuire, pro­duc­tion by Cas­sandra Tse and oper­at­ing by Xanthe Cur­tain – all deserve a men­tion, though I could­n’t fit them into the above, this was a super well-oiled pro­duc­tion!