The second show of the evening at Bats is innovative, original and incredibly funny.  

Yeti Is Dead/I am Tom is a sequel to a show Natalie Medlock, Dan Musgrove and Thomas Sainsbury put together last year.  In the original show – Dan is Dead / I Am a Yeti – Yeti (Natalie Medlock) is shot by the jealous wife of Tom (Thomas Sainsbury), Yeti’s lover. 

In the new show, while Tom is comforting the comatose Yeti, he is visited by a leprechaun named Sean (Dan Musgrove).  Tom falls in love with Sean but still has feelings for Yeti.  And so the inevitable love triangle in this quirky and off the wall show develops. 

The introduction of Tom’s father slows the pace down and could be cut and Yeti’s accent often makes her inaudible the originality of the dialogue makes up for these deficiencies.  

All three performers are consummate actors, their confidence, comic timing, and characterisation of the highest order.  Sainsbury in particular is brilliant as the self effacing Tom, almost on the verge of cracking but holding his own in an understated performance against the physicality of Medlock and Musgrove.  

A wonderfully exciting and eccentric production to watch.  

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Unlike last year’s Dan is Dead / I am a Yeti, the sequel – Yeti is Dead / I am Tom – is as short on content as it is high on performance.  

In my review of the former I detected “astute commentary on human behaviour, brought into stark relief by contrasting it with that of a Yeti. There is method in this madness and the result is a delight.”  

The fans who filled Bats for the show’s Wellington debut certainly expressed delight but this time I can’t help but wonder what someone uninitiated in the idiosyncratic humour of Medlock and Musgrove and/or Sainsbury would make of this. Very little transcends the display of consciously corny comic performance.  

The universal situations and attendant emotions of grief, mother-son dysfunction, new-found love, the eternal triangle, infidelity and its discovery, having to choose, the problem Dad, preoccupation over what is lost, the return home, and the intrepid journey to reclaim true love, are all there in the storyline.  

Natalie Medlock recreates Yeti with her customary flair and adds a good cameo as Tom’s sad Dad. Thomas Sainsbury plays Tom by demonstrably ‘acting’; blending minimalism with posturing and gesturing ‘in quotes’. Dan Musgrove has fun with the most roles, including a male nurse called Dennis Potter Okinawa, a magic flute-playing leprechaun called Shaun, Tom’s MILF-Cougar mother, and another Yeti called Simon.  

Amid their variously wacky performance modes, most moments of emotional truth are honoured or at least acknowledged, and yet there is a triteness about it this time. The driving purpose seems to be to entertain an exclusive clique of already committed fans. Where does that leave the ‘outsider’, randomly picking the show from the Comedy Festival programme or wandering in off the street? I think that is a valid question for all makers of Comedy Festival shows to ask.  

Although there was no printed programme, I have discovered that while Dan is Dead / I am a Yeti was directed by Sophie Roberts, Yeti is Dead / I am Tom has no director as such. There have been various ‘outside eyes’ apparently, but no-one, I suspect, asking the crucial questions: what is this really about; what makes it more than the sum of its parts; what has it got to offer those who are not already your devoted friends and fans?  

A director confronting such questions with rigour might have been able to work with the writer / performers to develop and shape the material, and then the performances, in such a way that – as with last year’s play – the “off the wall” absurdism served to expose timeless truths of human existence.  

As it stands, it’s a romp for the initiated. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer