You pos­si­bly couldn’t get more Welling­ton than head­ing to the the­atre, regard­less of the weath­er, to watch a musi­cal about pol­i­tics. Last week, I went along to Des­ti­na­tion Bee­hive: 2017, writ­ten by the clever and wit­ty duo of Lorae Par­ry and Pinky Agnew.

The seat of Tinako­ri Heights is high­ly con­tend­ed this elec­tion as every par­ty has a can­di­date stand­ing, but who will take it out? With MPs try­ing to appeal to the youths, swoon­ing over Sey­mour, caus­ing a ker­fuf­fle over coali­tions and feel­ing weak­en by Winston’s swag­ger… you’ll be in fits of laugh­ter as you get to know each can­di­date through song and dance.

There are plen­ty of famil­iar faces too –  you’ll be tak­ing a sec­ond glace as the actors and actress­es pull off some extreme­ly con­vinc­ing impres­sions. I per­son­al­ly was the most con­vinced by the Helen Clark and Grant Robert­son impres­sions.

The show has slick scene and cos­tume changes, sim­ple and effec­tive light­ing, fan­tas­tic one-lin­ers, unex­pect­ed plot twists, and catchy, toe-tap­ping tunes. I was keen to get my hands on a script – main­ly so I could learn the Sey­mour ser­e­nade song and the Nation­al Par­ty rap. Obvi­ous­ly.

If you feel like you need some reprieve from the cur­rent goings on in pol­i­tics, Des­ti­na­tion Bee­hive: 2017 prob­a­bly won’t give you that. But you’ll walk out of the the­atre still laugh­ing and pos­si­bly wish­ing that some of the genius script does actu­al­ly come true this elec­tion. Go see it!

Des­ti­na­tion Beehive:2017

On until 5 August at Cir­ca The­atre

By Lorae Par­ry and Pinky Agnew

Direct­ed by: Jan Bol­well