KEY POINTS:
For fans of coming-of-age stories, The Cape sounds like entertainment heaven, promising a Kiwi story about four mismatched guys on a drug-fuelled road trip from Wellington to the North Cape. Unfortunately, it's more like theatre hell.
Written by award-winning playwright Vivienne Plumb, The Cape has plenty of supporters in the theatre establishment, having already played at Circa Theatre in Wellington and Court Theatre in Christchurch. But I just can't see the appeal.
The play takes "a jock, a faggot, a dealer and a poet" and puts them in a car to Northland with little food and too many drugs.
Secrets and sub-plots including sexuality and mortality are thrown into what should be a heady mix. But the drama is strangely bloodless, the comedy's not overly funny and the dialogue swings from the banal to the poetic without warning.
The young actors are capable, energetic and easy on the eye, but they need stronger direction to dig deeper and create performances that go further than stereotypes.
Dane Dawson's EB is such a hyperactive nightmare that it is hard to see why his friends have been loyal for so long. Damien Harrison injects a bit of steel into his campy Jordyn but it feels like he's playing a "gay-guys-are-normal" message rather than a real person. James Kara flips his Arthur from stoned sweetie to menacing toughie with ease but again there's a sense of déjà vu about his "Maori philosopher" character.
Michael Whalley's Mo has the double whammy of cancer and terminal poetry and the actor seems a bit dazed by the knockout combination. Throughout, he's saddled with dialogue more appropriate for a middle-aged woman than a teenage boy.
For all four actors more attention to basic craft is needed. The Herald Theatre has a vertiginously steep seating block and if you're sitting in the top rows you tend to be looking at the tops of the actors' heads rather than their faces. Director Celia Nicholson should have ensured that her actors played out to the upper reaches of the audience as well as to each other.
In key scenes there isn't enough emotional impact to engage the audience (some even walked out) and at times the actors ignore the rules of the world they've created - tables are walked over, car doors that were stuck suddenly open, joints are thrown away and then appear again. All unnecessary distractions that take your attention away from the performers and the story they are trying to tell.
Sean Coyle's design also strikes a discordant note. While his white platform of peaks and squares is great for the large projections and cleverly evokes the varied locations of the play, it seems unnecessarily sterile, especially given this is a messy road trip story.
Wiki Kessell's wardrobe and James Nicholson's sound design are true to the 90s, capturing a sports label-loving, flannel shirt, grunge rock aesthetic appropriate to the characters and their stories.
But this nostalgia for the decade is not picked up elsewhere.
One of the strange things about live theatre is how much a flawed show can really infuriate you. Bad films and mediocre television flood the big and small screen but we just let it wash over us.
Bad theatre brings out the worst in even the most patient viewer. By the end of The Cape I was fantasising about throwing my shoe at one of the actor's heads to create some drama on the stage.
It's a real shame that The Cape doesn't work.
It's the debut production of kiwitheatre, a new theatre company with the worthy mission of "bringing excellent New Zealand scripts to the stage, particularly scripts for young or alternative audiences who were not catered for by exiting theatre companies".
These audiences are sophisticated consumers of entertainment and kiwitheatre will have to try harder to win them over.
What: The Cape.
Where: The Herald Theatre.
When: Until March 1.
Reviewed by: Shannon Huse.
