By FRANCIS TILL
The Auckland Festival is off to a quirky start with the production of ONE at K Rd's Covert Theatre.
Comprising five little plays (the operative verb is play) in the tradition of Mad TV and Monty Python sketches, ONE features a medley of characters, many of whom would be
at home on Red Dwarf.
Three of the pieces are by Auckland writers (Odd, by Garrick Burn; Cave In, by James McLaughlin; The Hole Thing, by Chris Anderson) and show good promise.
In the general shape of a shaggy dog story, Odd unfolds over three acts and showcases the pulchritudinous puissance of Lisette de Jong as a deranged psychiatrist/judge with a wickedly lascivious sausage fetish.
Cave In, on the other hand, is a grim tale about the "survivors" of a mine collapse.
It takes a bit of getting used to and leans on physical humour for most of its comic punch, perhaps ill-advisedly.
The Hole Thing is a medical tour-de-farce in which Justin Kean shines as a trepanation-fixated "doctor" with a very unorthodox remedy for migraine.
Run Around, by Lower Hutt's Andre Surridge, is an absolutely hysterical two-hander that explains, almost poetically, what stalkers really want.
Cath Campbell and Jarrod Thompson have caught this one perfectly and wring the excellent text absolutely dry.
The final in the five is Ledge, Ledger and the Legend, by American Paul Elliott and is the most elaborate of the set. A complex study of suicide, this one has a bit of sting in it, but to good effect. Wade Jackson and James McLaughlin do brilliantly as two men caught on the same ledge with radically different agendas.
The Covert is re-branding itself as a home for "live comedy theatre" but the basics of the venue remain.
Your barista today is likely to be the star of tomorrow's show, which can be a treat: no one is hidden behind walls of publicity.
What you see is almost always exactly what you get, and when it comes to ONE, that's worth the ticket.
Herald Feature: Auckland Festival AK03
Auckland Festival website
