One goes along to a new-ish Roger Hall comedy wondering just how well the acknowledged master will bring it off this time. Gladly, I find this to be one of his more strongly coherent plays, with a character-disclosure-and-development action that runs through its episodes which is complex and twisty enough to sustain interest. It has quite a few potent one-liners, which are mostly effective in terms of little shocks involving shades of grey rather than laugh-making.

 

Travelling overseas, you find Murphy’s Law lurking in every corner. Stuff can happen, some of it seriously nasty, but all of it stressful at the time: missing connections; having bookings coming unstuck; mislaying vital possessions; getting ripped off, or swindled, or robbed, or lost, or the trots. With luck, in retrospect it all becomes parts of a memorable and valued adventure. Stories to swap.

 

Having congenial travelling-companions certainly helps; and in this case, and respect, Alison and Adrian start off looking direly unlucky. Their chosen companions for a long-planned trip to Italy suddenly can’t go, and their apartment-neighbours Harry and Judy volunteer to go off with them instead. Adrian and Alison are both retired librarians, low-key, bookish. Harry, a retired plumbing supplies merchant, looks at first like nothing more than a crass, bumptious, loud-mouth JAFA, and his second wife Judy looks brash and flashy. What’s the point of having handsome breasts if you don’t flaunt them?

 

They both turn out to be more interesting than that (I mean the characters). Conversely Alison and Adrian, who at first appears impeccably ‘straight’, turn out to be carrying a painful heap of psychological baggage and trauma. Things are not made too easy for either of them. Which all makes for four challenging and rewarding acting roles.

 

The cast, with Catherine Downes as Alison (she previously played her in the Circa production in Wellington), and Stuart Devenie as Adrian (he previously played him in the Auckland Theatre Company production and in the Fortune Theatre production in Dunedin), on the one hand, and Vivien Bell and Greg Johnson as Judy and Harry, on the other, together with Amy Tarleton playing any number of female Italians, and Regan Taylor ditto for males, is generally excellent, well-cast, seamless, wholly credible. Jeff Kingsford-Brown’s directing is sure-footed, with everything working as it should.

 

John Hodgkins’s set (he also designed the Circa production) is fairly simple, with little more than a medium height wall, bounded by two arches, a movable counter; and sundry furnishings (including a Venetian gondola) being moved around by Taylor and Tarleton.

 

I’m told this production could be already booked out; still, if you’re in the region, it would be well worth trying hard to get to see the show. It’s that good.
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