Set, lighting and sound are highly stylised to rewarding effect for this edgy, enigmatic tragedy, in which Utu interrupts Brian and Diane's excellent adventure ... permanently.
An arresting presentation that employs irony and metaphor as linking forces, Car is well crafted moment to moment, and rewarding in spite ofa few minor flaws.
Throughout, there are two plays working side by side. That they will eventually collide is foreshadowed in the opening sequence, as is most of what will happen when they do. What the outcome means is a conundrum to which we are given contrary clues, the last of which is a lyric from what I took to be Snoop Doggy Dog's Serial Killa.
According to that song, and much of the play, denial is no defence against consequence, and some forms of denial can constitute self-nomination for destruction.
As Bro (Rob Mokaraka) puts it, smiling, "I reckon you can tell just by looking at them ... whether they have the right to live".
For most of the play, drug-addled Brian and Diane (Toby Leach and Dena Kennedy) occupy interior spaces with frantic farce, while Maori brothers Bro and Boy (Karlos Drinkwater) evolve more darkly outside.
When the quartet meets in common space, Boy is our anchor: a naif who is himself little more than audience.
Bro, on the other hand, is a powerfully realised, almost prototypical, nemesis: an Utu-crazed maelstrom of menace, seeking revenge for the random, brutal murder of their grandmother at the hands of two unknown white intruders year before. The tragedy, finally, is his.
The performance aspect of the play is finely tuned: the troupe behaves with balletic precision as their destinies, like some schizophrenic hydra, spin towards and over a cliff.
Last year the play won five Chapman Tripp awards, including best new New Zealand play for author Mitch Tawhi Thomas and director of the year for Rachel House.
