She Danced on a Fri­day is a spir­i­tu­al­ly evoca­tive and heart­break­ing play about a Hamil­ton mur­der in the ear­ly 1990s. Hav­ing only been in the coun­try for four days, 32-year old Margery Hope­good was stabbed to death in a pub­lic toi­let on the 10th of Jan­u­ary, 1992. She was­n’t here for an OE, but to meet some fam­i­ly friends — includ­ing the Sal­va­tion Army work­er who helped put her up for adop­tion so many years pre­vi­ous­ly.

How­ev­er, she nev­er made it.

Nico­la Paul­ing — whose grand­moth­er had organ­ised Margery’s adop­tion — takes to the stage in this one-woman show and utter­ly shines as a vari­ety of char­ac­ters in Margery’s life. From Margery her­self, to her birth moth­er, to her tem­po­rary moth­er, we’re drawn emo­tion­al­ly through Margery’s life from a baby in Hamil­ton until her death on her return. Paul­ing takes on char­ac­ters with all the ease of slip­ping on a dress — some­times char­ac­ters change with­in one or two lines of dia­logue, and each is as dis­tinct and pow­er­ful as the last.

It’s clear that the sub­ject is very close to Paul­ing’s heart — every line car­ries a cer­tain authen­tic­i­ty — like­ly from the exten­sive inter­view­ing and research put into this devised piece, and Paul­ing’s per­son­al con­nec­tion to the sto­ry.

It is a gut-wrench­ing, emo­tion­al work — espe­cial­ly the moments when Margery finds her end to an acoustic ver­sion of Rod Stew­art’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It (the last song lis­tened to on her Walk­man the day she died) and it will absolute­ly leave you in tears.

Though She Danced on a Fri­day may leave you with more ques­tions than answers, it is an impec­ca­bly well-craft­ed work and def­i­nite­ly worth see­ing on stage.

She Danced on a Fri­day is being per­formed at BATS The­atre in Welling­ton until the 15th of Sep­tem­ber 2018. Get your tick­ets from here!