This one belongs in the WTF? category, not because it defies categorisation (it is Theatre) but because whatever it is about or means is something the production fails to share with its audience. “I have no idea what was going on,” was a common comment in the foyer following the opening performance.

We’re in grotesque commedia mask/clowning territory here, with performers representing components of the body and speaking in rhyming couplets, not unlike the morality plays of old (where actors personified virtues and vices).

The most verbally coherent character is The Herald* (Julia Guthrey), who welcomes us after the scene setting sequence of collective writhing, moaning and heavy breathing around her supine body, which lies before a festive banner featuring a jester-capped skull and uncrossed bones.

It is she who acknowledges that judgement has already “passed from your eyes to your brains” and explains that we are to be treated to the story of one body, Bones: his Skin, Blood, Meat and Guts. “He is a buffoon,” she tells us, “as am I.” So are they all. The other black-clad wearers of white, grotesquely-featured masks set about straightening his contorted limbs …

In an equally contorted voice, Bones (Lance McBride) speaks of “the false dawning of the façade”, “how I grew into a Buffoon” and something about finding his “vile beat” only to be accused of “politic wankitude” by The Herald. But instead of moving on to greater clarity, Buffoon’s Birthday becomes more and more mangled.

We can be forgiven, I think, for expecting some physical evidence that Skin (Angela Johnson), Blood (Janina Mattheson), Meat (Hamish Parkinson) and Guts (Lucy Mulholland) all meet with Bones in the one body, which presumably also has vital organs somewhere to make it actually function. But if that is part of the rationale behind the highly physical performances and abstract formations, I don’t get it.

Indeed despite the great differences in the masks, there is a strange sameness in the physicalisations – hunched over shoulders, loping movements, lolling tongues – which does little to distinguish the differing qualities we might expect in each personification.

The title, publicity and programme notes, and some of the phrases I glean from the often incoherent text reveal it is Bones’ birthday and the others are going to give him gifts.

An outbreak of anarchic violence is resolved by Meat dragooning the others into some semblance of order in the manner of a fiercely authoritarian corporal who answers to Sergeant Bones. In retrospect (having checked who’s who in the programme, because the play itself does not make it clear), I can see there’s an anatomical logic in this. But what engages me most in this sequence is my concern for the actors whose ears are being shouted into at point blank range. Has attention been paid to ensuring no lasting damage is done to the actors’ actual ear drums?

Much of the problem in deciphering the rest of the show lies with the strained and convoluted vocalisations of the black verse, which is too necessarily contrived in its often clever locutions to be guessed at. Lest my old ears were letting me down I checked afterwards with three others, aged 20 or less, and all reported they were unable to comprehend most of what was spoken. (One suggested the masks were helping to distort the voices.)

There is a sequence involving a doctor’s waiting room where the doctor reveals a vested interest in ensuring no cures are forthcoming. There is a fuss made about a cake with red sauce “running rouge"; a heart beat is enhanced with red pulsating light …

Suddenly, in yet another melee of bodies, The Herald’s mask is torn off and she delivers a delightfully clear speech that starts with breath that fills her “with a giggle” and concludes that she is “born into the amazing absurdity of us”. Then she collapses.

I am sure the writer/director Damien McGrath, for whom this has been “a hobby project … for the last few years, writing on and off,” and the cast and crew who have “continuously inspired, energised and humbled” him with their “endless generosity of ideas, time an ability” all know what they are doing and why, but somewhere along the line the imperative of communicating it to the audience – of sharing the experience with us; of engaging us to some purpose beyond just watching them act – has been lost.

Without knowing those involved and what their priorities are, I cannot tell whether it is redeemable through further development. Maybe it all made sense once and maybe it can do so again.
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*The show is from Christchurch so I don’t think any reference to Auckland’s daily newspaper is intended.
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