In celebration of a revolutionary trip

By GREG DIXON

Alberto Granado is up for the argument but Che Guevara isn't having a bar of it.

In a grotty, windowless rehearsal room above Auckland's SiLo Theatre, the sound of the disputation echoes a little off the well-worn wooden floors.

Actor-writer Paolo Rotondo, who is Granado in his self-penned play Little Che, is concerned about the story arc as they work up a new scene.

His fellow traveller, director Andrew Foster, just wants to block out the scene so they have a structure on which to experiment.

For long minutes, the pair shoot back and forth, endlessly restating their arguments as fellow actor Eryn Wilson, Che in this two-hander, stands by silently.

Just as I'm about to phone a United Nations negotiator to settle it, they agree to break for lunch to consider their positions.

"It's all part of the creative process," Rotondo tells me as we walk to a nearby cafe for a roll and a chat. "I love that part of theatre. We're keen to keep it evolving."

Rotondo, an Italian-born New Zealander who is probably most familiar to audiences as Thomas in the local hit film Stickmen, wrote Little Che, his second play, nearly two years ago. Based in part on Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries and set in 1951, the piece has two medical students, a 20-year-old Guevara and his mate Granado, doing their OE through South America aboard their Norton 500, aptly named La Poderosa (the powerful one).

Guevara is not yet the communist, revolutionary leader he will become, but Little Che charts some of the formative experiences, particularly his time at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru, which fired his socialism.

But this is no po-faced play. It paints the now near-mythical yarn (Hollywood has two films on the story in the works) as a road trip with laughs: the catch-line could be something like "wine, women ... socialism".

In its first outing, in Auckland and Wellington last year, this paper called Little Che "witty, original and enormously entertaining", while the Listener suggested its "anarchic silliness works a treat".

Still it's a curious choice of story - one Rotondo calls a "larrikin tale" - for a New Zealand actor who has never been to Cuba to turn into theatre.

"I was obsessed with Che when I was a little younger," says the 30-something Rotondo. "He was a revolutionary hero. I had this romantic idea of a guy who fought for the underdog.

"I was searching for a long time for a piece of theatre ... and I found this story to be so universal.

"It's about a young dude on the road trying to score girls and drink wine and he has his eyes opened to the world."

Rotondo, whose work includes Street Legal for TV and A Street Car Named Desire for theatre, admits writing and performing your own material is one way to generate work for yourself in a tough market place.

And he has big plans. He hopes to take this reworked version to Edinburgh's fringe festival, after touring it to Hamilton, Christchurch and Dunedin as well as the two main centres.

Little Che, a physical comedy-drama incorporating multi-media elements, is also something of a reaction to what Rotondo views as an at-times staid theatre scene with nothing much for callow types.

"I suppose using someone like Che, who dudes still wear on their T-shirts because he's cool, is one way of getting in younger people, who are pretty concerned with what's cool and generally have a sense of rebellion, whether they really are or not.

"I think a lot of younger audiences get really bored with high-brow theatre. The ideas might be similar to what we're trying to present, but they're presented in a way that's dry and the relationship with the audience is formalised in a way that young people aren't going to dig. So I, kind of, like to make theatre ... where we're not getting preachy to anyone.

"It's a little more rock 'n' roll style. I need theatre to be alive, to have a heart beat. [A lot of theatre] is thespians being very good on stage and I find it really boring."

No argument there, Granado, no argument there.

* Little Che, Maidment Studio, September 10-21.