Camping at Circa

While lots of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans are off hol­i­day­ing in remote parts of the coun­try (hud­dling under can­vas, find­ing sand­bags to keep the creek out, hop­ing the cara­van does­n’t blow away) Circa Theatre have kindly brought the camp site to those of us who stayed at home – in the form of Dave Arm­strong’s new play The Motor Camp.

The Red­mond fam­ily have arrived at The Wind­mill Motor Camp after a tir­ing six hour drive from Wel­ling­ton. Frank (Tim Spite) is what used to be known as a Teach­er­’s Col­lege lec­turer, now a kind of second-class cit­izen at the Uni­ver­sity. His wife Jude (Dani­elle Mason) is a high fly­er – run­ning the entire Arts fac­ulty – and teen­age daugh­ter Holly (Florence Mul­her­on) is reluct­antly along for what she hopes will be her last hol­i­day with the fam­ily.

The Wind­mill seems to be run along strict, almost mil­it­ary, lines by an unseen Dutch tyr­ant named Zon­neveld (a con­sist­ently funny voice over from Cees Ebskamp) and the Red­monds are asked to set up their cara­van far too close to the His­lop-Tairoa clan next door. Mike His­lop (Phil Vaughan) is a build­er and all round dag, Dawn (Olivia Viol­et Robin­son) keeps the books for his busi­ness and tries to keep Mike going in one dir­ec­tion and their teen­age son Jared (Anthony Young) helps around the camp while shyly attract­ing plenty of female atten­tion.

So, here we have a clas­sic Arm­strong-ian setup – a poten­tial clash of classes, races, sexes and ages – and an equally clas­sic pay­off: noth­ing is quite as it seems and every­one would appear to have a secret. Arm­strong’s usu­al anti-PC schtick invari­ably dis­guises a power­ful sense of right and wrong – he attacks pre­ju­dice by show­ing what an unsat­is­fact­ory way it is to look at the world, not by rant­ing at us.

The pro­duc­tion, dir­ec­ted by Danny Mul­her­on who also provided the bones of the story, plays up the humour – the two guys, Spite and Vaughan, get all the best moments – but I won­der wheth­er there were more oppor­tun­it­ies for pathos or wheth­er more could have been made of the oppor­tun­it­ies that were there. Arm­strong and Mul­her­on build us up to a hell of a dra­mat­ic con­clu­sion where the two fam­il­ies could eas­ily (and in a dif­fer­ent play prob­ably would have) imploded but in less than a heart­beat we get a not par­tic­u­larly cred­ible end­ing and a cur­tain call and then we’re on our way home.

Which is a shame because Arm­strong uses impec­cable plot­ting tal­ent to get to that point. Seeds are care­fully sewn, events are cun­ningly fore­shad­owed and even the many gags don’t go to waste as he scores points on top­ics as diverse as phonics and fish­ing.

Spite and Mason spark well togeth­er even if they might be a little too young for their roles. Vaughan has superb nat­ur­al tim­ing and a great look but was some­times not that easy to hear and Robin­son does­n’t really have enough to do as her char­ac­ter is the least roun­ded of the cast. The kids are great: Florence Mul­her­on is a totally recog­nis­able petu­lant teen and Young is effect­ive by not doing much – he’s a calm, centre of the storm going on around him but it’s a char­ac­ter-driv­en calm – not an act­or not act­ing (if that makes sense).

Dave Arm­strong is a Wel­ling­ton treas­ure. He hides a good heart behind a cyn­ic­al exter­i­or and is the only play­wright I know con­sist­ently writ­ing about New Zea­l­and soci­ety as it really is – and doing it with plenty of laughter. The Motor Camp is a fun night out, def­in­itely not dis­pos­able theatre, but it lets itself down with a too easy end­ing.