Reviewed by Shauwn Keil.

Upon enter­ing the theatre, we are treated to a mag­ni­fi­cent set, designed by Jas­mine Bry­ham. Everything that reminds you of Nana and Pop­pa’s house is present. Jars of God knows what across the kit­chen bench. A kettle and cool mugs. Din­ner set items. A paua shell ash­tray on a shelf on the right. News­pa­per spread on the lar­ger table. Even a cheeky sew­ing kit pre­tend­ing to be a bis­cuit tin. The set invokes nos­tal­gia for me, and com­bined with the little more than ambi­ent nature sounds (pre­sum­ably put togeth­er by com­poser Raven Har­vey-Lomas) I feel like I’m prob­ably sit­ting in a rur­al New Zea­l­and home rather than next to the K‑Fry on Cam­bridge Ter­race. The lights (Mat­ilde Vad­seth Furholm) feel quite eer­ie, I’ll say now that this is main­tained through the course of the pro­duc­tion with very little changes to the light­ing. You are held in one state for the most part without a black­out, and for my taste per­son­ally, it’s a fit­ting and excel­lent choice. Any­way, I’m look­ing too far for­ward. I’m sit­ting there like “woah, I can­’t wait to see how we go.”

The play does start in the dark, and we first meet Sam­antha and Richard Hale, played by Abby Lyons and Oliv­er Knott respect­ively. The first things I notice are a preg­nant baby belly, one that Lyons sus­tains the effects of per­fectly through­out the pro­duc­tions entirety, and a bit of word slur­ring. As dic­tion picks up for the most part car­ry­ing on, I can look at this, per­haps, as a shared act­ors choice of show­ing the giv­en cir­cum­stances of arriv­ing late and being tired. There is a gag of banging the small table set up early, which I’m a suck­er for – though I crave more sur­prise.

Three oth­er char­ac­ters make their way on to the stage, and sadly this is where I start to see per­form­ance clashes, con­fus­ing the over­all style a little. Con­stable Dav­id (Sean Bur­nett-Dug­dale Mar­tin) and Officer Mur­ray (Will Toon) make for a good dumb and dumber cop pair­ing. Sean in par­tic­u­lar holds an impress­ive and res­on­ant voice, com­mand­ing atten­tion in all of his moments on stage. I felt, how­ever, that while these char­ac­ters earned a bit of lev­ity and defused ten­sion well in moments that were neces­sary, less cari­ca­ture would have made for a more cohes­ive per­form­ance between the cast. I did not feel like they were quite from the same world and as a res­ult, some moments of ten­sion were missed in favour of humor that did­n’t land.

As drama unfolds, it is lovely to watch life exist around the main focus. Sam and Angela Peters (Ottilie Bleackley, also Dram­at­urg) mak­ing tea in the kit­chen while the nar­rat­ive con­tin­ues is a great example of keep­ing the world alive bey­ond the dia­logue we hear from anoth­er char­ac­ter. I would even ask for more oppor­tun­it­ies like this. Could a char­ac­ter be read­ing the news­pa­per and check­ing back in to the con­ver­sa­tion once in a while? Did that pot want to go back in to the sink? Even so, it’s small things like mak­ing a cuppa that rein­force the idea of a nat­ur­al­ist­ic set­ting. This gets a golden tick.

Any­way, we get our first light­ing change while the story plays out a sil­hou­ette on a black cur­tain with a tung­sten back light. A beau­ti­ful effect, miss­ing a little energy. Shar­on Wright (Lily Wright, also Cos­tume Design­er) holds our focus in these sil­hou­ette moments, play­ing out the tragedy. What’s con­sist­ent in each return to the sil­hou­ette is rush­ing. As we don’t get to see what is being reacted to, just a little more air around the act­ors dis­cov­er­ies would chill our bones all the more. Future red light and spooky sound set this up nicely, we just need that third part of the unholy trin­ity for a truly mem­or­able moment.

Men­tions of Coun­try Cal­en­dar, Face­book, Cell­phones and the over­all aes­thet­ic of the play leave me uncer­tain of what time peri­od we are in – it’s pos­sible I missed a dir­ect men­tion. But I won’t push on through the entire story. I will say that I found this adapt­a­tion to be won­der­ful on paper. Alia Mar­shall (Writer, Dir­ect­or) has craf­ted a beau­ti­ful piece touch­ing on sex­ism in rur­al New Zea­l­and, and really, in gen­er­al. Not only the tox­ic dis­plays of it from the fuzz and Dick, but the heart-break­ing effects that it has on the women shown in con­ver­sa­tion.

I’m not just talk­ing about the “you should smile more” fedora type (not that that does­n’t totally suck either), I mean the intense stuff you wince at and struggle to ima­gine because you don’t think you have any male friends who would be cap­able of it. Being able to see con­ver­sa­tions take place on the sub­ject only to be brought down when the men return really irks me, in a way that I believe it was meant to. My friend com­men­ted that he did­n’t feel like these prob­lems exist any­more and that there’s little point address­ing them without a solu­tion. “How much aware­ness can you bring if you don’t have an answer?” I could­n’t dis­agree more and we debated this for a good while after the show. While he was­n’t on board, I think it’s import­ant for people in that mind­set to view such con­tent, in fact, I’d go a step fur­ther and say that they need it the most. Theatre chal­lenges and we need more audi­ences to chal­lenge – scary as that may seem.

The block­ing is dope, I got a good sense of the dir­ect­or’s vis­ion and choices made through the inten­tion­al block­ing. All I could ask for is a bit more com­mit­ment at times from act­ors to move with the same intent. I know I am being quite picky in the per­form­ance depart­ment, and it comes from a place of see­ing the high poten­tial of this play and how much fur­ther a team effort could have brought the pro­duc­tion. Make no mis­take, I enjoyed my time in the theatre and I’ll reit­er­ate that the script was fant­ast­ic. I think the main thing is uni­fy­ing the cast on what we are want­ing to achieve, mak­ing sure we are gen­er­ous act­ors selling anoth­er scene part­ner­’s per­form­ance in our reac­tions rather than look­ing for our own glor­i­ous moments in them, and fight­ing the urge to rush. Even in moments of pause, a little breath­ing would­n’t go amiss. Everything is already there to turn this play from good to great, and great to truly mem­or­able.

This was the clos­ing per­form­ance of Trifles at BATS Theatre, and it was abund­antly clear that the team put a lot of heart in to this pro­duc­tion. Cri­ti­cisms aside, I could­n’t help but smile with them all dur­ing the bows, it was one of the sweetest things I’d seen. I would sin­cerely love to catch anoth­er ver­sion of this play, and I look for­ward to see­ing future works from Heart­break­er Pro­duc­tions. Peace homie.