Happy 13th  birth­day to The Bac­chanals! They are throw­ing us the sur­prise party, leav­ing behind their ‘serious/politically con­scien­tious’ plays in order to be ‘silly & have fun’.  The Clouds is silly and heaps of fun while still con­tain­ing polit­ic­al and social com­ment­ary. The Bac­chanals are grow­ing up, but not away from their roots. (As a bonus (for me) I was at the play with a friend and his 13 year old son. )

In the play, Dad is in debt and is in danger of los­ing the house the car the spa etc if he does­n’t find the money to pay it all by tomor­row. He wants his son- a ‘horse lov­er’ – to go to uni­ver­sity to become a law-yer in order to argue his way out of the debt. His son is not inter­ested and so Dad goes him­self. It does­n’t go so well (or rather, it goes too well) so the son agrees to become a law­yer. He after listens to Right and Wrong argue their case and then picks a side…

There are asides dur­ing the play either to explain or aug­ment the script. There are ref­er­ences to NZ cases and Wel­ling­ton insti­tu­tions.  There are dad jokes. There are sexu­al jokes. There is polit­ic­al and social com­ment­ary pok­ing fun at almost everything.  The inter­pret­a­tion you’ll make depends on your polit­ic­al lean­ings. (Appar­ently this is tra­di­tion­al!) The dodgy humour and con­tent amused the 13-year-old no end.

N.B. Tick­ets are selling well so book online!