A Night of Chaos, Laughs, and Sec­ond Chances

Gin­ge and Minge’s REDEMPTION is a mis­sion to save the dis­card­ed and reject­ed from the bot­tom of the bin and give them anoth­er shot.

These two have been tear­ing up stages across Aotearoa since 2020, and their chem­istry is as strong as ever. Megan, fresh off a Mas­ter of Arts in Cre­ative Writ­ing, and Nina, a sea­soned the­atre pro­duc­er and per­former, bring the kind of ener­gy that makes you won­der if they’re secret­ly pow­ered by espres­so and pure chaos.

The premise is genius. Every night, three brave artists are invit­ed to the show to pitch a sketch or scene that’s failed in the past. Then Gin­ge and Minge rope in their cast of sea­soned come­di­ans and improv actors to rework these flops into some­thing bril­liant. The audi­ence votes, and the win­ning sketch­es get their moment to shine, in oth­er words redeemed. It’s like a com­e­dy ver­sion of a sec­ond chance at love, but with more may­on­naise.

If you’ve seen Gin­ge and Minge before, you know what to expect. Wild, messy, and high-ener­gy per­for­mances that demon­strate their sharp think­ing and impres­sive con­nec­tion as part­ners in com­e­dy. Even though they weren’t doing the heavy lift­ing this time, this show still reflects the Gin­ge and Minge style of loud, emo­tion­al, and of course always much weird­er than you’d expect.

The sketch­es I saw were a mas­ter­class in absur­di­ty. There were the human per­son­i­fied emo­tions. Think an adult, chaot­ic ver­sion of Inside Out that some­how led to sex­u­al ten­sion with a jar of may­on­naise. A tense dra­ma explored the com­pli­ca­tions of romance when your new part­ner isn’t famil­iar with what a reflec­tion is. And an incred­i­ble musi­cal about a paci­fist pray­ing man­tis with out­stand­ing impro­vised songs that spanned four gen­res: funk, bal­lad, to hip-hop.

The lessons to be learned here are that love pre­vails, every­thing deserves a sec­ond change and improv is very sil­ly.

 

Writ­ten by Nadia Free­man