The Young & Hungry crew, cast and creatives, aged 15 to 25, are all largely undiscovered* and given the opportunity by The Young & Hungry Arts Trust to stretch their emerging craft with the help of professional mentoring. Taken in this context, this year’s two new plays in the Auckland season showcase an enthusiastic appetite for theatre, which gives this young generation ownership of their voice, on and off stage.

Atlas /Mountains /Dead Butterflies could not be more contrasting in style, direction, delivery and presentation from Dragonlore. However, thematically, both focus on ‘coming-of-age’ as key characters face up to the consequences of their own and each other’s actions, or try to evolve a more adult worldview.

As with Dragonlore, the audience is presented with a split reality. High above the earth, Greek God Atlas (played by Jimmy Heazlewood) is tired of the huge burden of carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and complains to The World (Albertine Jonas) that he would love to retire. His retirement plan is to get butterflies to take over the role of lifting up the earth. Both Heazlewood and Jonas, while fluid and smooth in their slow moving physically, need to slow down in terms of vocal work and/or project and articulate more, to land their huge characters with conviction.

Meanwhile, deep within Scarfie-land Otago, flatmates Rhys and Phoebe, activists and a plumber, intercept and exist, in one form or another.  

Writer Joseph Harper has given us much to ponder – maybe too much. However, co-directors Amelia Reid and Shadon Meredith (with assistant Alice Pearce) guide the creative team well, and do an admirable job of staging Harper’s philosophy 101, as well as eliciting some bold and effective performances from the cast.

The impressive ensemble cast interact, weave and work as one, like a Greek chorus, becoming at various times a tribe of ants, butterflies, water, statues and the voices of panic and anxiety. Physicality and expression are all used to good effect. 

As an extension of the Greek chorus idea, the roles of Rhys and Phoebe are each shared between three actors. In this sense, each character becomes a revolving emotion or cyclical force, rather than one entity. In terms of individual moments, again, some vocal performances are compromised by rushed gabbled phrases.  

However, there is a clear sense from the performances by Lane Twigden, Matt Smith and Hayley Brown, that Rhys is struck dumb with inertia. Yet when he is given the opportunity to do something, prompted by a call from ‘Green Aotearoa’ – very well led by Greenman Freddie Graham – he is completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s problems, unable to move or do anything.

Phoebe, by contrast – effectively communicated by Crystelle L’amie, Pearl McGlashan and Saraid Cameron – would much rather just put her head down, type an assignment, and get on with it, even if she doesn’t know what ‘it’ is, or how ‘ it’ will guide her in the world, as it’s much easier not to question. (Harper cleverly relates this back to the plight of the Greek King Sisyphus.) 

Another of Harper’s philosophical ponderings is on the nature of nihilism: the notion that nothing is worthwhile. Such dark notions (while very well performed by Stoneman Andrew Gunna and Melody Knapp) can be so negative and so all consuming, the natural reaction is to retract from the darkness and decide not to care. The key thing for brave playwrights taking audiences to dark places like this is to balance the black with some light, so we don’t give up or disengage from the play.  

Thankfully, ‘Hope’ arrives in the form of the plumber, beautifully played by Amelia Reynolds, full of positive energy and lyrical prose.  

In the middle of all this, a member of the creative team (sorry, I’m not sure who he was), make the decision to stop the show on opening night and deal to what he perceives to be a huge sound issue. Very, very big call. I’m not sure what we, the audience, the group the play is intended for, are missing out on, as I and those around me have no idea anything is wrong. While the person instructs the actors to ‘stay in’ (character), we are left out in the dark.

Full kudos to all on stage who indeed, stay in, while the sound desk is rebooted.

The plays’ lighting is ominous and emotive while the background set of ropes is effective imagery for the Queen Butterfly’s big moment, ‘built’ in real time by Atlas. Butterflies on earth are cheerfully and simply articulated and brought to life, by paper glued on to sticks, while boxes represent a barrier to progress, a cage of inertia and a heavy burden, increasing in size and dimension, till they become too much to tackle.

So. Will The World be saved? Will the Queen Butterfly succeed? Will Phoebe and Rhys drown in their own unanswered questions? Will they climb out of the water and scale the mountains of hope?

I can’t tell you. Certainly, this work delivers wonderful visual imagery through its talented creatives and cast on earth. A very contemplative 45 minutes of performance poetry and philosophical deliberation.

*A few young professionals, such as Pearl McGlashan and Amelia Reynolds, dot the cast of Atlas.

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