Booom! Embracing the excess of the 1980s

Embracing the excesses of the 1980s before the stockmarket crash, Booom! is an explosive new play premiering at this month's Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival.

Billed as "big shoulders, big hair, a big con", Booom! is all about greed and deception.

Set in 1987, the day before the worst sharemarket crash in New Zealand history, Booom! tells the tale of two con artists working in Hamilton.

Directed by Stuart Devenie and written and produced by Michael Switzer, Booom! is a modernisation loosely based on Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, which was first performed in 1610.

The play is structured as a farce with witty dialogue and a fast-paced plot that forces the con artists - Chastity and Sachs - to keep on their toes until the end.

Switzer said the audience was in for a real treat.

"It is the funniest farce."

The script has been reworked along the way, which has been tough on the actors who have had to learn and re-learn lines.

However, it's made for a funnier take on the fast-paced play.

"One of the joys of the show is working with Stuart Devenie," Switzer said.

Devenie is a well-known New Zealand actor and theatre director whose career spans three decades on stage and screen.

"Stuart really knows the form, he knows the farce and he's a stickler for getting it right."

The play centres on Chastity and Sachs, the best scammers in Hamilton. Over the course of a day they assume many guises - stockbroker, clairvoyant, dietician, PR consultant, antique expert, property developer, Swedish exchange student, image consultant, ghost and gold trader - all tricks to make more money.

Of course each ruse makes the situation more complicated. It's a race to see what collapses first - the economy or the scam.

Switzer said sources for the characters and situations had come from many sources, including YouTube, old Hamilton City Council records, oral history and memories of some of the older cast Booom! will be held at the Medici Court at Hamilton Gardens (in the Piazza if it's wet), on February 15, 16, 21 and 22. Tickets from www.dashtickets.co.nz .