What a great idea - a one-man play about "the most emotionally charged day in New Zealand cricket history", as the 1953 publicity puts it. And it starts well: as played by affable entertainer Jonny Brugh, New Zealand bowler Bob Blair, 22, and his fiancee Narissa Love, 19,are just a couple of kids, hiding from Bob's mum under the bedcovers. He shows off his "forward defence shot"; she thinks it's "quite sexy", before posing for nude photographs holding his cricket bat. It's all good cheerful fun - and gives cricket's Romeo and Juliet some welcome earthy normality.
The tragic romance is well known: Blair, touring with the New Zealand cricket team in South Africa at Christmas 1953, found out that Love had died in the Tangiwai rail disaster. He stayed at the hotel while New Zealand went out batting on Boxing Day, but when the team got into difficulties (Brugh nicely describes Bert Sutcliffe's bloody head bandages as an "emergency turban"), Blair unexpectedly turned up to hit some runs.
Surprisingly, 1953 dwells on the bonhomie and team camaraderie before the fatal day more than it focuses on Blair or Sutcliffe. While Brugh, dressed for the whole show in cricket whites, offers only slight characterisation to differentiate between team members, his comedy and good humour make the hubbub work.
But vital, "emotionally charged" scenes are missing: we only catch a brief glimpse of Blair at the hotel during the match, and his heroic walk out to the crease is related to us as it was to New Zealand at the time, via telegram. While archival radio broadcasts are used to good effect, relaying the climax via telegram is about as dry as clicking on per-ball match updates on cricinfo.com.
1953 is part of the Pumphouse Development Season which, as the fabulous $10 ticket price suggests, isn't about polished scripts and performances. Brugh is good company and this show in progress is bound to gel as the season rolls on.
What: 1953.
Where: Pumphouse Theatre, Takapuna.
When: Until February 28.
