The Bowler Hat is a surrealist murder mystery wrapped around the life and death of Magritte, the painter who is particularly famous for his disconcerting bowler hat, apple, fish and sky/window motifs. 

The story begins at his funeral before the past, (his mother’s suicide by drowning decades before), catches up with the present.  Then it all gets very Dada, with mystery and chaos, a missing naked corpse, a dancing detective, a mysterious river. 

There’s also a cast of 14 joined on stage by a six piece band so the tiny Bats stage is full to overflowing much of the time. 

Angie Farrow is an intriguing playwright and this work, brought to Wellington from Palmerston North, sets a high standard in performance, direction (also by Farrow) production values.

Ralph Johnson is especially striking as Detective Tigram. Despite all that it’s got going for it though, it doesn’t quite come off, bogged down perhaps by having to accommodate such a large cast.

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Angie Farrow’s new play uses the Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte as inspiration.

The play begins with Magritte’s funeral, attended by various members of his family and friends. The problem is that his clothes – the classic dark suit, white shirt, black tie and bowler hat – are missing. And we’re told that Catholics get so funny about nakedness. The relative normality of the scene is interrupted by Detective Tigram bursting in to investigate the drowning of a woman. Magritte’s mother died by drowning 30 years previously. Coincidence? Indeed not, for that is the very death that the Detective is investigating and his suspect is the late Magritte himself.

From here on in, it is the Detective who will demand our attention. Dressed like Inspector Clouseau, but thankfully without the accent, Ralph Johnson is the star of the show. Exuberant and charismatic, he provides the link that centres the various elements of the show and is a delight to watch. He spends much of his time smoking a carrot in an echo of one of Magritte’s better known works, The Treachery of Images. This is not a pipe!

In genuine surreal fashion, the show weaves three separate strands that would seem to be in contradiction to each other. Moving between whodunit and avant-garde genres, all three are pulled together and given a neat finish. Of course, having a surrealist root, we shouldn’t get too obsessed with making sense of the details. It is satisfyingly artistic and that is enough.

Punctuating the performances are projections of various Magritte paintings and a live band play throughout. The music integrated into the whole piece very nicely, explained by music director Suzy Hawes as representing the ocean.

An amusing play that is greater than the sum of its parts.

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As usual the Fringe is up and running before its official opening on Friday the 9th. First up at Bats is a one-act play which, like a lot of other plays and events at this year’s festival, uses surrealism and absurdity.

Angie Farrow has created a surrealistic world that involves the funeral, the paintings, and writings of the famous Belgian artist Rene Magritte as a starting point to delve into and present on stage some of the dreams, illogicalities, confusions, symbols, nightmares that confront us when faced with Magritte’s art as well as our own lives.

Tom Stoppard has also used the painter in his short play After Magritte but Stoppard’s comedy is confined to showing how a logical explanation lies behind even the most seemingly bizarre chain of events.

Like Stoppard’s play Farrow’s is neatly constructed and it too has a detective who solves a mystery. The mystery is the death of Magritte’s mother thirty years before, but there is also Magritte’s missing naked body which his family has come to bury. Into all this intrudes a theatre director under the impression everyone is in her play and should join in with her three dancers.

Along the way we are presented with Magritte’s paintings projected onto the backdrop as well as suggested in the actions of the actors. It is expertly directed by the playwright with a large cast led by Ralph Johnson in commanding form as the detective who finds himself caught up in his own investigations. The excellent group of musicians under the direction of the composer Suzy Hawes gives tactful, atmospheric support.

The play, however, lacks heart and like Stoppard’s is too contrived and always seems to be on the brink of becoming a comedy but then fails to deliver. Maybe the lack of laughter was due to the Black Hole of Calcutta that the full-house at Bats became on the sweltering opening night.

[I am assured steps have been take to alleviate the heat at BATS – ed.]

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In her programme note Angie Farrow quotes surrealist Belgian painter René Magritte thus: "If one looks at a thing with the intention of trying to discover what it means, one ends up no longer seeing the thing itself, but thinking of the question that is raised."

So what is her play, The Bowler Hat – which premiered last year at the Festival of New Arts in Palmerston North? What does it do, never mind why?

It begins with his funeral, attended by a strange array of personages and presided over by a priest in kitsch archbishop attire, then invades it with a carrot-smoking detective who becomes embroiled in rehearsals for a creative dance programme that in turn becomes a detective thriller with him as the terrified star, while a trio of husband, wife and a young man huddle on a park bench attempting to confront a fearsome beyond.

A green apple, a pipe and a fish are recurring images along, of course, with the bowler hat (Magritte’s best known pictures featured such items in place of a face between a bowler hat and a collar and tie against a blue cloudy sky).

But of course it means nothing. It’s just an excuse for a clever writer to paint the stage with 14 actors – performing with reasonable skill in a heightened (sur)reality style, compelling for their clear faith that what they are doing is real – and 6 musicians, enhanced from time to time with projected Margritte images.

Much biographical information and philosophical discussion is skilfully inter-woven into the action, not that we should allow ourselves to be distracted by any of the questions thus raised. So for those who accept the exhortation not to attribute meaning or ponder beyond "the thing itself", when the play stops, it’s over.

Good-O. Next?

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