The deeply moving and fascinating saga of the ‘Rose-Noelle’, tells of how, back in 1989, four men survived in a flipped-over trimaran for 119 days, for much of the time crammed into a space no wider than a king-size bed, as their yacht drifted out into the Pacific and then, by means of a freakish El Nino current, drifted back to the New Zealand coast; of how they shiftingly related to, and ended up not loathing, each other. It has been the subject of two books, by two of the four, and of this play, premiered in 2000.

Duncum interweaves the ‘Rose-Noelle’ sequences with others depicting the poignant months one of them, Jim Nalepka, later spends at the bedside of one of the others, Rick Hellreigel, terminally ill with cancer and slowly going downhill, becoming more helpless. It might have been naff but it is not, with plenty of wry humour, semi-insults, and irony, and a tenderness that is only given open expression near the end. 

It is a big ask, not only for the playwright but also for the director and the actors, to maintain theatrical interest, rhythms and pace in their representations of the endurance of such long passages of time, and in the transitions between sequences. There is a very good play here, with the four characters well differentiated, and variety of action, and emotion, on offer. Still, its realisation clearly requires skilful and inventive directing, and here has received it. Especially, rendering the capsizing credible requires quite cunning use of light (or darkness), sound and timing. A second climactic challenge comes near the end, when the yacht crashes on to an offshore reef and the characters somehow make their way to land. 

Nick Dunbar, as Jim, an eastern seaboard American, maintains a lightly-wielded accent, and an expressiveness that differs from that of the three Kiwis and becomes more accentuated in the bedroom sequences as Rick becomes more immobile. Ricky Dey as Rick copes well with a double role, as the intensely physical high-achiever, on board, and the bedridden invalid. The central relationship throughout, between Rick and Jim, is neatly modulated.

Stephen Ure as John Glenny, the yacht’s owner and captain, comes across well as an experienced ocean sailor whose occasional cheery utterances mask a grim fatalism (“Aren’t we having fun!”). He knows only luck can save them and doesn’t expect it will. But it does. Greg Johnson’s Phil, an older man who is a bit clumsy and accident-prone, and preoccupied with food, grows more likeable as the play goes on.

Nicole Cosgrove’s set centres on a bed on a sloping rostrum that serves both as the mattress base in the upturned yacht and as Rick’s bed, with a few props shifted around, by cast members, and with inventive uses of the areas around it, that simply gesture at realism.

Jennifer Lal’s lighting design conveys effectively the sense of the dim light in the aft cabin of the yacht, contrasted with the well-lit bedroom. Gareth Hobbs’s sound design is also unusually vital, given the omnipresence during the yacht sequences of the sea, yet with sea sounds not too obtrusive when not needed. 

It is, all in all, a fully successful production, conveyed with a wealth of understanding of human nature.
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“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simplymessing about in boats.” Literally upending Kenneth Grahame’s whimsical Wind-in-the-Willows-ism, Ken Duncum’s Flipside is about four characters boating about in a mess.

In 1989, the newly commissioned trimaran ‘Rose Noelle’ was smacked over by a huge rogue wave on its maiden voyage from New Zealand to Tonga. Its crew of four spent an unprecedented 119 days huddled in the vessel’s upturned hull as it drifted in the South Pacific before being wrecked on rocks at Great Barrier Island.

Adapted from Capsized written by American Jim Nalepka, one of the crew, it hass taken a dozen years for this award-winning New Zealand play to make the Manawatu stage.

While a wait that long for such an insightfully profound piece of theatre from one of the country’s best writers – Duncum picked up the 2010 $100,000 Katherine Mansfield Scholarship – is, to say the least, unfortunate, this production goes a heck of a way towards making amends for the delay.

Backlit along the length of two walls by a fluorescent blue waterline, Nicole Cosgrove’s striking utilitarian set is based on a sturdy queen-sized bed mounted on a slightly raised tilted platform. Its open-framed curved headboard serves as ships wheel and hatch opening; its mattress doubles as the mariners’ cramped and stuffy four-man berth and as the sick-bed of wreck survivor, Rick Helreigel.

While Flipside is a shipwreck saga, it’s really a story of friendship and love – one narrated from the perspective of Jim in a superbly seamless and accented realisation by Nick Dunbar. An instructor at Outward Bound, Anakiwa, Jim has been befriended there by Rick, kayaker and photographer. Despite the American not having any sailing experience, Rick convinces him to sign on for the voyage.

Captain and ‘Rose Noelle’ boat-builder John Glennie, played by Stephen Ure, is a single-minded man convinced his creation, in a line lifted straight out of the Titanic shipyard manual, “will never ever flip.” He has other short-comings too – “The radio is for emergencies. This is not an emergency!” – and is often at odds with the instinctively ‘take-charge’ Rick.

Fourth crew member is the ‘infuriating’ Phil Hoffman. Greg Johnson’s recalcitrant character starts out as the being one who the other three would probably elect to eat first when the rations run out.

Laced with laconic humour, the four disparate personalities act out life confined in the hull with a compelling intensity coupled with an unexpected degree of physicality. They create an authentic bobbing bubble of complex interaction, philosophy, passion, pathos and resilience.

Like all terrific theatre, Flipside is a multi-layered piece, and the survival scenario has its universal aspects that transcend historical circumstances. The four could just as easily be members of a rock band who, while no longer in tune with one another, still find themselves bound by contractual and creative necessity, and remain locked in a relationship almost as intimate and often as uncomfortable as marriage – even to the extent of admitting that during their prolonged crisis, there was no place else they’d rather be.

The on-board survival scenes alternate with Jim tenderly caring for Ricky Dey’s semi-paralysed Rick some eight months after the ordeal. The return of the ‘beaten’ cancer that the character has briefly alluded to in the first act may indeed explain some of his tersely-worded reactions during the big upturned drift.

Dey strikes exactly the right balance in switching between the ailing and survival-mode Rick. The poignant irony is that, having survived four months afloat, the character is brought low by a malignant tumour, while Jim is unable to return the lifesaving favour he owes his buddy and ‘Rose Noelle’ shipmate.

At the helm of Flipside, director Kate Louise Elliot charts her own deft set of navigating skills, quietly and expertly piloting this raw and rugged, dramatic, compassionate and uplifting love song of the sea home, to prolonged applause from a full opening night auditorium.

There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply going to see it.
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