Popcorn

Welling­ton Reper­to­ry The­atre’s newest offer­ing is Pop­corn, Ben Elton’s play. The dia­logue is wit­ty, the script­ing tight and the themes pre­scient despite being writ­ten in 1996.

Set in the home of a exploita­tion cin­e­ma direc­tor, Bruce Delametri, Pop­corn takes place over one night as the leg­endary Mall Mur­der­ers invade Bruce’s house after he wins an Oscar and demand his and his fam­i­ly’s com­pli­ance towards their fiendish plan. With mur­der, may­hem and a lot of sex­u­al­i­ty, it is a piece for those of you unafraid of a bit of spice in your night out.

The per­for­mances are the high­light of this piece, with spe­cial note made to three par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing roles, those of Wayne and Scout — the Mall Mur­der­ers, played by Jonathan Beres­ford and Sara Dou­glas — and Brooke, an up and com­ing actress, played by Stacey O’Brien. Beres­ford and Dou­glas bring a enter­tain­ing insan­i­ty to their roles, hov­er­ing on a knife’s edge, ready to snap at any moment. O’Brien, play­ing mul­ti-faceted and eager Brooke, has an inter­est­ing dance moment, as well as a lot of great asides to the audi­ence.

I do, how­ev­er, ques­tion the baf­fling choice of punc­tu­at­ing every joke or heavy moment on stage with a cor­re­spond­ing image-based ele­ment on the giant tele­vi­sion screen that takes up a large por­tion of vis­i­ble stage space. I under­stand that films and film­mak­ing are a sig­nif­i­cant theme of this show, how­ev­er, it reads as a lit­tle con­de­scend­ing to the audi­ence to visu­al­ly explain jokes that they already have laughed at, espe­cial­ly as this is not an ele­ment present with­in the base script. The screen, at times, is also rather dis­tract­ing, and per­haps not as innate­ly nec­es­sary as used.

How­ev­er, Pop­corn is an inter­est­ing, though vio­lent show, that feels a lit­tle like being on the edge of a pan­ic attack. The pace does­n’t let up for the hour and a half long piece, and the show itself is most­ly quite strong. Bring your shocked gasps!

Pop­corn is being per­formed at the Gryphon The­atre in Welling­ton until the 19th of June — no show on Mon­day. Tick­ets avail­able here.