Auckland's 2014 theatre season kicks off with a revival of a startlingly original show that premiered at the 2010 International Arts Festival in Wellington.
A very clever staging concept places the audience in the centre of a donut-shaped space and swivel chairs allow you to follow the action swirling around the circumference of a raised ring.
This inversion of customary perspectives is enhanced by placing the event on the main stage of the Civic Theatre which at one point delivers a spectacular view of the empty auditorium.
The seating is accessed via a corridor that takes us past the backstage machinery and the swivel chairs generate a democratic, at times knee-knocking, sense of intimacy as audience members choose where to direct their focus.
The "theatre of recollection" in the show's sub-title refers to a non-linear narrative in which past and present are jumbled together in a series of poetic images that evoke the unpredictable and unreliable nature of memory.
The staging is brilliantly inventive with superbly crafted illusions conjured up with the simplest of means. Puppetry is used to great effect with a remarkably endearing life size seal and an elegant swan joining the parade while John Gibson's wonderful score captures the changing moods of life's journey.
Carl Bland and Peta Rutter's script throws up larger-than-life characters that are expertly animated by the large, highly talented cast.
Andrew Grainger is particularly engaging as an exuberantly theatrical music hall impresario while Bruce Phillips finds an elegiac tone for the recollections of old man contemplating his misspent youth.
At times the surrealistic whimsy is weighed down by some rather grim existential musing on unfulfilled ambitions and the show is at its best when it embraces the absurdist humour of life as a carnival filled with moments of surprising beauty.