Bittersweet comedy owes life to Toffee Pops

Kate-Louise Elliott, Alison Quigan and Elizabeth McRae warm up the vocal cords.

Alison Quigan's bittersweet comedy about death, Mum's Choir, owes its life to a banana and a packet of Toffee Pops.

As Quigan's 81-year-old mother lay dying, her family maintained a bedside vigil not daring to slip away even for a meal break. Finally Quigan decided she had to eat so she peeled a banana, the only food she could spy next to the bed.

"Then my brother said he could do with something to eat, too, so we rummaged around in the bedside cabinet and found a packet of Toffee Pops. We were trying to eat quietly but the plastic packaging crinkled and we started giggling about the absurdity of it."

When Quigan related the anecdote to playwright Roger Hall, he told her, "If you don't use this, I will." Realising the potential for a new play, Quigan, then artistic director at Palmerston North's Centrepoint Theatre, began writing.

The result was a moving story, with some laugh-out-loud moments, about the O'Reilly family who return to their childhood home to farewell their mother.

Memories are revived of outrageous parties, dinners courtesy of the Edmonds Cookbook and summer evenings playing cricket on the back lawn. But the jaunt down memory lane stops abruptly when they discover mum's last wish. She wants them to perform Faure's technically challenging Requiem at her funeral. It means amid all the other rituals in dealing with death, they must learn their parts in just a few days.

"It was actually easy to write because the experience we had as a family surrounding mum's death was very rich," says Quigan. "It was the end of her life and it had been a great life so we found it a surprisingly unifying experience and very intense which meant we talked about it quite openly and quite a lot."

She got her family's permission before putting fingers to keyboard and left out the more personal details, rounding out the characters to make them recognisable to New Zealanders.

While it's not exactly a topic for dinner-party conversation, burying a parent is an occurrence most of us face. For this reason, Quigan thought Mum's Choir would appeal most to people over 35.

However, student magazines reviewed it positively and there were always younger people in the audience. She attributes this to our fascination with the mysteries of death despite not wanting to talk about it.

Director John Callen believes it's because Mum's Choir is about rituals which are lacking in modern society.

Though it is a death that brings the characters together, Quigan wanted the work to be a celebration of life. She likes to ensure her stories ring true to New Zealand audiences, hence the touches of Kiwiana.

"We had a policy at Centrepoint Theatre of telling New Zealand stories and in 1992 we did some research that showed that since 1986, it was New Zealand works that brought in the largest audiences."

It is good news to veteran actor Elizabeth McRae, who plays Aunty Nola in the Auckland Theatre Company's version of Mum's Choir. "It was all English or American plays when I started. Now with the growth in New Zealand writing, coming across one of those plays almost makes it seem exotic."

She also likes the fact that Quigan writes female parts that reflect "real women".

"As men get older, the roles proliferate; as women age, the roles get thinner. I audition for women in their 60s but the directors cast 40s. It doesn't happen so much on stage but definitely in film.

"However, older female characters are often great fun because they are no longer as inhibited as they might have been and can be wonderful catalysts for change with the comments they make. People expect them to be conservative but they often come out with the best lines."

* Mum's Choir at SkyCity Theatre, June 1-24