In this year’s fringe festival there were two things I truly loved above all else, one was Binge Culture’s Drowning Bird, Plummeting Fish and the other was the cow costume from Boomerang Lean and the She-Devil from Outer Space. The very fact that Binge Culture’s next show Animal Hour contained that same cow costume, should have issued it a free pass. I should be praising it to the sky right now.

But, I’m torn. I really admire the Binge Culture Collective. They are, only a year after their first production, steadfastly on their way to become one of the defining voices of the young Wellington theatre. Their energy and guts are infectious and their inspiration slightly embarrassing. At least to me, stuck behind this computer screen when I should be out doing theatre as good as these guys. Bastards.

I should have loved Animal Hour. It is the latest development in their alliterative exploration of the alienations of this generation… [More]
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A winter’s night on lower Vivian Street.  In the bright light of a doorway, a manky tiger blows saxophone; Bluesy tones reverberate off the abandoned YMCA building across the road. 

Through the door, a throng of mostly young university types fill the stairwell and lobby, eagerly anticipating Animal Hour.  As the host of the show Ralph Upton intones flatly soon after we are seated, "There’s a buzz tonight.  The kind of buzz you get when things are going well."

What is Animal Hour?  I would describe the show as a mash-up of idol-style talent quest, lurid lounge act and post-empirical investigation into the human condition.  Director Joel Baxendale’s programme note speaks mostly to the latter, providing us with Binge Culture‘s working hypothesis: "Can we prove we’re more than animals?" 

It’s this attempt to probe and investigate theatrically, in a way that science emphatically cannot, that lifts this work above juvenile skit humour and grunginess.  There is a genuine search for meaning here, and despite being played for humour and absurdity there’s a lot of fascinating commentary going on.

Upton is deliciously amorphous and unsettling as the host, who appears to be addicted to… goldfish feed?  I couldn’t tell.  Clearly a predator, he vies for alpha supremacy with the bandleader (and lighting designer) Gareth Hobbs who plays a… bear?  Dog?  Whatever it is, he also channels a fair amount of Christian Bale, achieving a sort of menacing righteousness. 

He and the rest of the band, a cow (Steph Cairns) and the aforementioned tiger (Jake Baxendale), double as the judging panel who are more or less disgusted with the efforts of the three hapless contestants: Rose Guise, Fiona McNamara and Simon Haren.

These three upbeat, smiling, naïve and vulnerable specimens of humanity explore a huge range of animal selves, from puppy dogs to baby giraffes to creatures of the deep. Ultimately they are guinea pigs, and Upton the researcher who torments them with a mixture of cruel curiosity and dispassionate derision. 

Then, in turn, he puts himself under the microscope and we bear witness to the squirming bacterial life of his self-loathing before everything completely degenerates once again into brute animalism and Upton plumps for a much more immediate and physically effective method of relieving his sexual frustration.

Returning to the company’s hypothesis, I am tempted to say the true investigation is "Can we prove we’re more interesting than animals?"  The conclusion, while far from conclusive, seems to tend toward the negative.  Mind you, it’s safe to say no other animal would make a show like this. 

Perhaps the most interesting theatrical sequence in the show has the contestants acting out YouTube clips of both animals and humans at play, fighting, or in struggles against one another, while Upton blankly enunciates selected comments that have been posted in response.  At first this seemed like an incredibly lame idea.  Acting out YouTube clips?  But as they persisted with it the device revealed fascinating layers of truth, both theatrically and subjectively.

The production feel is decidedly rough-edged, the kind that conjures up images of starving thespians living in damp, frigid flats in Aro Valley, and there are some minor technical hitches on opening night that leave you wondering why they bothered with the live feed TV set.  But it doesn’t matter.  This is the kind of show you could do in an alleyway or a toilet cubicle and still it would resonate.  

It’s got all the raw brilliance of a hunk of magnesium chucked in a bucket of water.

There is indeed a buzz, and it’s the kind of buzz you get when you go to see shows by young people who attract prizes for ‘Best Newcomers’ and ‘Most Original Concept’ at Fringe festivals, and cite UK devising company Forced Entertainment as a primary influence.  It’s the buzz that surrounds exciting, experimental theatre on the borderline. 

This is the kind of underground theatre that is at once the fount, the boundary and the acid test for the health of the wider arts community that it lurks beneath.  It’s a good buzz.  If you want some reassurance that theatre is alive in Wellington go catch it while you can.
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Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer