Skin Tight is my favour­ite ever play and I’ve been want­ing to see it per­formed since I first read it. Circa Theatre did not dis­ap­point with their iter­a­tion of this show; a glor­i­ously evoc­at­ive piece with incred­ible sta­ging, per­form­ances and move­ment.

The play is not just a love story to its char­ac­ters – and the highs and lows that come with­in their lives – but a love story to the land­scape of this coun­try, the rolling moun­tains, the rivers, and the dizzy­ing snap of spring. It is this imagery that car­ries us into the piece.

A reima­ging of Denis Glover­’s poem The Mag­pies, Skin Tight sets us in an apple orch­ard, on a farm some­where with­in rur­al New Zea­l­and, where two lov­ers find them­selves togeth­er.

Eliza­beth (Ella Gil­bert) and Tom (Arlo Gib­son) are very much in love, and have weathered such grief in their lives. Our two char­ac­ters and the dia­logue dip in and out of tem­por­al­ity as they fight, make-up, love, live and grow old; age­less with­in two single act­or bod­ies, but with the weight of many years on their backs. Gary Hende­r­son’s writ­ing is gor­geous, and so very real, with this per­vas­ive sense of love under­cut­ting the entirety of the script – love that is bru­tal, and pas­sion­ate, and mourned when it is gone.

Skin Tight is a mas­ter­class in phys­ic­al theatre. Move­ment (Luke Hanna) and intim­acy (Tandi Wright) inter­twine with­in this work, cre­at­ing a piece that almost dances through the beats of these char­ac­ters’ lives. From fight­ing – rolling on the ground, push­ing, slap­ping, bit­ing and grabbing – to smal­ler, more sen­su­al pieces of intim­acy, the moment is held beau­ti­fully by our two act­ors, who per­form wholly com­plex phys­ic­al­ity across the show. There is one par­tic­u­lar scene involving a knife that is one of the most dar­ing and most erot­ic things I’ve even seen staged. I dread to think the state of the act­ors’ bruises by the time this sea­son is over!

The heights of sen­su­al­ity that these act­ors must reach with­in this show would be a chal­lenge to most, but both Gil­bert and Gib­son sur­pass them with (seem­ing) ease, with a palp­able chem­istry and genu­ine heart. Eliza­beth is cocky and quick to emote, and Tom a little more thought­ful, but both have their places with­in the work, find­ing their feet in moments about infi­del­ity, and the War.  A strong dir­ect­ori­al hand (Kath­er­ine McRae) is very appar­ent, with beau­ti­ful stage pic­tures that set the piece out amongst the stark­ness of the stage.

I’d like to make a spe­cial note of the design­ers behind this show, whose work is appar­ent but simplist­ic, an invoc­a­tion to the notes of the land­scape but does not dis­tract from the move­ment of the piece. Brynne Task­er-Polan­d’s light­ing is warm, cut softly across set and bod­ies; cre­at­ing inter­est­ing shad­ows on the floor, bare thighs, the back wall of the theatre. Lucas Neal’s set is mostly dark, geo­met­ric poles that cre­ate the shape of a build­ing, along with the infam­ous met­al bathtub – which is filled with water across the course of the show. The music (Oliv­er Devlin) and sound design (Ben Kelly) are almost char­ac­ters of their own – multi-dimen­sion­al but not over­power­ing, per­fect notes that sup­port the fever of the fight­ing and the wist­ful­ness of the his­tory with­in .

The final scene of the show has no dia­logue, and is a send-off, in a way. Water falls from the ceil­ing, into the bathtub, and the char­ac­ters strip naked, finally free from the trap­pings of years, to bathe togeth­er – one final sen­su­al, deeply intim­ate moment. It is near spir­itu­al in its fram­ing, and we are left with an older Tom (KC Kelly), step­ping out onto stage for a final moment, as his young­er self sobs over his depar­ted wife behind him. He stares off into the sky. A mag­pie cries. He cuts a final slice from an apple. We rest.

Skin Tight is being per­formed at Circa Theatre in Wel­ling­ton until the 24th of Septem­ber. Get your tick­ets here.