Sepia coloured photo of Geenty in a checkshirt, hat with ear flaps and a spade across his shouldersCraig Geen­ty comes from a large and extend­ed fam­i­ly. They’re gre­gar­i­ous. They like a bit of a drink. They’ve been whis­per­ing about a fam­i­ly secret for years. Great-grand­fa­ther Joseph is still offi­cial­ly miss­ing after dis­ap­pear­ing on his way back home after mak­ing a deliv­ery in town in 1921. Did he crash? Did he run away? Was he mur­dered?

Geen­ty, wear­ing a check shirt, tights, and a cap with ear flaps wel­comes us at the door and invites us to join him in a beer tast­ing. It’s the first indi­ca­tion of how mul­ti­ple lev­els of con­nec­tion are woven through the show. Each of the renamed four beers* serve as a new chap­ter in the sto­ry of how his grand­par­ents (plus great-great and great) met. He reflects on his own per­son­al­i­ty and links it back to sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences his ances­tors went through. It’s part sto­ry­telling, part melo­dra­mat­ic mime, part genealog­i­cal explo­ration — with danc­ing. There are a lot of names and time­frames to keep track of so plant pots are used to stand in for peo­ple. Light­ing helps to define dif­fer­ent time­lines.

The main focus is the miss­ing per­son mys­tery. It’s an inter­est­ing thing to be part of an audi­ence where the per­former is describ­ing con­tra­dic­to­ry sto­ries about indi­vid­u­als and there are oth­er relat­ed indi­vid­u­als in the audi­ence with you. Around the laugh­ter and beer tast­ing, Geen­ty asks ques­tions of mas­culin­i­ty, drink­ing cul­ture in iso­lat­ed New Zealand rur­al areas, and how fam­i­ly secrets and choic­es echo through the gen­er­a­tions. Very good.

* From Hey­day Beer Co., 264 Cuba Street.