I once again embarked on the odyssey that seems to be one of Kickin’ Rad/Soap Fac­to­ry’s Fringe schticks these days — an impro­vised soap opera, set in Welling­ton, with a cast of ten and new episodes on the hour every hour from 1–11pm.

Hav­ing stum­bled exhaust­ed­ly but also with a great sense of excite­ment from the ten hour epic that was their last long-form soap opera (Mir­ror Mira­mar, Fringe 2018), I was incred­i­bly keen to see what this group of tal­ent­ed Welling­ton impro­vis­ers would have up their sleeves.

And I was not at all dis­ap­point­ed, stick­ing around for the entire­ty of the bizarre, hilar­i­ous, and often quite touch­ing show.

Drs. Shelly (Jen O’Sul­li­van) and Evans (Matt Pow­ell) Bay own NZ’s lead­ing ani­mal hos­pi­tal. For the most part, this goes very well for them (there’s a dash of rev­o­lu­tion around about episode six — we’ll get to that lat­er).

They’re joined by a cast of live­ly and soap-appro­pri­ate char­ac­ters.

There’s a hint of romance brew­ing between lovelorn ambu­lance offi­cer Pam Hamm (Chris­tine Brooks) and nurse Jake Remore (Wire­mu Tuhi­wai) but it’s dashed to the rocks when Pam ends up with chief of oper­a­tions Gre­ta Point (Clare Ker­ri­son) after a par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant degus­ta­tion menu and a few too many glass­es of port. Pam, how­ev­er, is not lovelorn for long, end­ing the ten episodes with three peo­ple after her heart; Remore, Point, and wealthy Pol­ish donor Laars (Lyn­don Hood, after his first char­ac­ter was killed off by mutant roost­ers).

After sur­vey­ing the audi­ence, Pam decides, that she should love her­self instead, much to our cheers and applause.

Recep­tion­ist Dami­an Raven (Sam Irwin) gets a lit­tle too big for his boots after get­ting lost in the cat­a­combs of the hos­pi­tal and decides to com­mit some fraud. He weaves in and out of the main plot, occa­sion­al antag­o­nist, but most­ly just there for his cross­word.

Fishol­o­gist Char­lie Boothroyd (Jon­ny Paul) has lost touch with the sea, and def­i­nite­ly does­n’t have dad­dy issues. It sure is con­ve­nient that his father — he dis­cov­ers — is the hos­pi­tal’s ani­mal chap­lain Kei­th Grant (Stephen Young­blood), who spends most of the sea­son run­ning away from that fact. They do rec­on­cile, in the end, but it’s a near thing.  Kei­th takes off on a whirl­wind romance with Dr Sam Shep­pard, who spouts ani­mal facts when she’s ner­vous, and the pair get mar­ried at the end.

It is not just saucy entan­gle­ments in the world of Bay’s Anato­my, but true hos­pi­tal! dra­ma! too. The med­ical team give an octo­pus a cat­fish heart trans­plant — to much suc­cess, Sam los­es an eye to a lion but is her sight is saved by the prac­tise’s best sur­geon, Shelly Bay, and Dami­an com­mits, in his own words, “a shit­ton of fraud.”

Once ner­vous, but quick­ly quite mani­a­cal sales­man Kea Fal­con (Lyn­don Hood’s first char­ac­ter), los­es sight of his busi­ness goals, near­ly los­es his job, and then kid­naps Pam, set­ting off the show’s kid­nap­ping plot, which is wrapped up in under an episode. Kea is killed, very grue­some­ly, by Pam’s mutant roost­ers, which I assumed were just throw­away jokes at the start of the show but came into their own after ten episodes, basi­cal­ly becom­ing char­ac­ters in their own right.

The entire sea­son is under­scored by Gill Gril­li­gan (Liam Kel­ly), a salty sea dog turned bartender/musician, who pro­vides a fan­tas­tic sound­track to the show, as well as some gor­geous sea shanties. It’s all very fit­ting for a show set some­where in the vicin­i­ty of Kil­birnie.

Some addi­tion­al high­lights from this ten hour odyssey -

- Many Freudi­an slips, some of which were clear­ly not inten­tion­al.

- The entire clin­ic, bar­ring Shelly and Evans, decid­ing to take their work­place from their oppres­sors and start a rev­o­lu­tion, which most­ly seemed to involve the drink­ing of many bev-er-rauges from Gill’s Grill. VIVA LA REVOLUTION (the work­ers were right).

- The life. death, exhuma­tion and slight muti­la­tion of Anas­ta­sia, the clin­ic’s Russ­ian Blue cat.

- Sam com­ing on stage eat­ing grad­u­al­ly more and more weird things, cul­mi­nat­ing in a can of Chef in the final episode, throw­ing pro­ceed­ings off for sev­er­al min­utes.

 

Bay’s Anato­my was ridicu­lous fun, and a true under­tak­ing. The right blend of satir­i­cal and heart­felt, I can­not imag­ine the ener­gy that went into impro­vis­ing for near­ly ten hours and keep­ing a log­i­cal plot straight. Major kudos to the per­form­ers and crew.

I was very com­mit­ted to the roost­er sto­ry­line, and I had one hell of a good time.