It’s strange to be back in a place like BATS dur­ing times like these, but I’m very pleased I went along to see PLAY, a gay dat­ing dram­e­dy here from Auck­land.

It’s a play with­in a play, of a sort — the first twen­ty min­utes or so being a form of a draw­ing-room com­e­dy, then the show takes an abrupt dip into real­ism (of a sort), explor­ing the life of the writer writ­ing said com­e­dy.

The per­for­mances are excel­lent, and the show is very well direct­ed. The actors cap­ture the space, mak­ing their three-per­son show feel a lot larg­er than life, and it’s incred­i­bly fun­ny.

The first por­tion of the play is set in mod­ern-day city life, but the per­form­ers speak as though they’re with­in an Austen nov­el, which leads to many excel­lent quips, and quite a lot of euphemisms for one’s… shall we say… john­son? I was cry­ing with laugh­ter, let me tell you.

The sec­ond part of the show is a lot clos­er to home, a world that one could eas­i­ly walk past on any of Welling­ton’s streets. Rich (Alex Walk­er) is writ­ing a play about a mar­ried man who cheats on his hus­band with a wait­er. All things feel per­haps a smidge too close to home as he’s torn between Dan (Zak Enay­at), an artist, and Nick (Liam Cole­man) a real­tor, both of whom he def­i­nite­ly cares for, but he can’t quite set­tle for either.

PLAY is an inter­est­ing fos­sick­ing around of polyamory, open rela­tion­ships, love and com­mit­ment. Though the end­ing was per­haps a lit­tle telegraphed and did­n’t quite feel sat­is­fac­to­ry, I had a love­ly time. Sup­port shows like this, they’re worth it.

PLAY is on at BATS The­atre in Welling­ton until the 12th of Sep­tem­ber. There are lim­it­ed seats avail­able for two of the per­for­mances, so get in quick!