The best theatre is full of surprises. Not cheap or outlandish plot twists, but the organic sort of surprises that feel like the missing pieces of a puzzle. The sort of surprises that leave audiences smiling in awe. Andrew Gunn’s Potato Stamp Megalomaniac digs these out in spades.

Andrew tells us to think of the show as a revolution rather than a play. And that’s exactly what it is. What could be a straightforward monologue about a manic episode is turned into a collective tour through a pivotal moment in his life, with Andrew himself playing multiple friends, flatmates and figures, switching roles with breakneck speed and clarity. [More]  

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The first thing we’re told in Potato Stamp Megalomaniac is that we’re not here to watch a play; we are here to take part in a revolution.  We are told this by a tall warrior-like shaman clad in strikingly stylised armour composed of corrugated cardboard and gaffer tape, so it feels prudent to believe it.  Potential upheavals of language and cultural norms aside, what ensues is a performance that it is impossible not to engage with on some or many levels, not least directly. 

The tremendously versatile Basement Studio space is transformed by ‘performance designer’ Christine Urquhart’s ubiquitous set, running in traverse through the centre with raised stage areas at each end.  One of these houses the technical base of operations, comprising a mixing desk, laptop and an intriguing one-by-half metre homemade electronic circuit board mounted on clear perspex.

The entire floor, as well as the walls and ceiling above the performance area, are covered with white and brown paper, plus there’s an overhead projector and a one-by-two meter box of dark soil in the centre.  So it’s apparent even before the pointy-helmeted robot wizard man in the striped undies comes on and encourages us to let go of our preconceptions that this theatrical experience will be original, if nothing else.

Written and performed by young Wellingtonian Andrew Gunn, based on his experience during the final year of his B.A. at Victoria University, the narrative involves the development of his proposal for the editorship of Vic’s student mag, Salient; a process which fuels his increasingly radical ideas about language and connections between people and all things.

These carry over into his home life, straining relations with his flatmates as he treats their space and personal belongings with increased impropriety, in accordance with his belief that materialism is at the core of humanity’s disconnection from the universe.  The verbose conceptual raves that permeate Gunn’s account highlight his clear intelligence, and his determination to transcend the status quo at a profound level. 

The potato stamps themselves symbolise a form of art and communication that can never be reproduced exactly due to their tendency to decompose.  Gunn evidently chooses to embrace this entropy, striving to continually reinvent language so as to free humanity from our oppressive inhibitions or some such noble quest.  It seems ultimately impossible to harness control of something so resolutely transient and unmeasurable. 

Portraying the majority of characters himself with cursory distinctions, Gunn holds conversations in real time between himself and one or several persons with skilful vocal clarity.  Developed with assistance from dramaturgs Nisha Madhan and Stella Reid, the play’s structure doesn’t entirely forgo convention or material cohesion, but it definitely stretches the boundaries, blending fervently philosophical conversations on existential revolution with an inquiry into clinical hypomania. 

Unassuming genius operator and sound designer Tom Dennison’s indispensable contribution cannot be understated, tacitly pottering away at his home-made nerve centre to operate Ronnie Livingstone and Ruby Reihana Wilson‘s lighting design, and underpinning Gunn’s performance with his intensely tonal and rhythmic electronic score.

Gunn plays in his dirt box, demonstrates his potato stamp prowess and reimagines discussions using shadow puppets on the projector; he dangles upside down to sing songs and ultimately gets every single person in the room physically involved. Aspects of the production seem arbitrary or at least their significance is not clearly apparent, which could arguably support the overall message that he has something to offer us that can only be explained to a point, beyond which it must be simply accepted and experienced. 

One does wonder how much Gunn still holds to the philosophies he expounds as devised in the grip of a manic episode – the earnest emphasis he delivers it with certainly rings with the truth of someone who believes what they’re saying.  Does he still yearn for the pure enlightenment implicit in his call to destroy our domineering cultural mores, or has he made peace with the existential conundrum babbling just below all our surfaces? 

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Potato Stamp Megalomaniac focuses on the great feeling at the start of a manic episode, and how this different way of thinking could be a key to… something … A spiritual transformation, or enlightenment, maybe!  

Andrew Gunn is our performer.  To an impressively grandiose modern classic electronics score straight from Einstein on the Beach (played on a potato-based instrument by Tom Dennison), he enters on swappa-crate stilts, looking like cardboard luchador version of Pyramid Head from Silent Hill.  We are duly informed by this latter-day, self-proclaimed prophet that we are here “not for an act of theatre, but for a ritual… For a consciousness revolution!”  It’s very strange.

A quick word about the setup: Potato Stamp Megalomaniac is staged in a reverse version of theatre in the round.  The audience are on rugs and cushions toward the centre of the space, and the action plays out in stages around the sides and in the aisles criss-crossing the venue. 

This choice is bloody genius.  17 Tory struggles with any sort of conventional staging – the sightlines and acoustics are just too difficult – but here the audience arrangement fantastically backs up the experience of mania.  There’s a restlessness to the whole thing.  Not only are we encouraged to move around to keep in contact with the performance, but we have to. 

Immediately after we meet the prophet, Andrew becomes a student version of himself.  He paces all around the outside of the room.    His thoughts circle as urgently as he does, and we are constantly adjusting to follow him physically, just as we’re constantly struggling to keep the thread of his rather grand theories of life, language, enlightens, and the typeface of VUW’s student newspaper, Salient.  It’s a mind-blowingly cool match of form and content. 

Throughout the evening, we’re constantly bouncing back and forth between watching Andrew try to implement his (unfinished) ideas, joining him in discussion of those ideas, and watching the people around him try to understand his erratic behaviour.

It’s from his attempts to implement his ideas that we get the title of the show.  Andrew’s chosen devices for re-imagining language are potato stamps.  While carving out a stamp, he explains that from the moment a stamp is carved, it starts to decay, making each and every stamp mark unique.  It’s a call to resist the industrializing effects of typeface and grammar.

Having lived with several people who have experienced manic episodes or even manic breaks, the glimpses of the people around Andrew are very welcome.  Gunn plays everyone, from his co-editor, psychiatrist and Religion professor to his flatmates, switching between their distinctive rhythms and postures with an absolutely mesmerizing lightning speed. Andrew’s co-editor at Salient, who thrives on borrowing his energy and encourages creativity, shows how infectious and stimulating it can be to have a partner on the way up, as he does push-ups in the living room. 

His flatmates, however, are having a harder time, and are eager for Andrew to come back down, trying to convince him to see how his behaviour is impacting them.  It would be incredibly tempting to send up these voices as disrupting Andrew’s high, but when Gunn performs them, he settles into each voice earnestly.  It’s a much appreciated counterpoint to the overwhelming enthusiasm elsewhere. 

There’s a long section where Andrew engages the room in a conversation about how our use of language limits our thought.  It is counterpoised with a visit to a somewhat disinterested psychiatrist, who is reluctant to treat Andrew’s sleeplessness without a look at his larger behaviours and symptoms.  The juxtaposition of these two sections finally starts to draw together how all of the ideas can be building to the same point: our quickness to label something abnormal as dangerous or unsafe, rather than try to mine the experience for meaning. 

And yet… I’m not quite convinced.  This may be my personal experience or not, I honestly can’t tell even two days after the show if I’m being fair to it or not.  But in that big conversation about grammar and how it influences /limits /separates thoughts, there’s a distinct sense of competition between audience and Andrew; it’s a little too much fun to score a mental point or get something clever over him to buy into his theories completely. 

It makes the transition to the call to action somewhat forced and jarring.  As we take to the streets, I’m going along more out of a desire not to poop out than because I’m convinced we should have a consciousness revolution.  And I’ve had experiences of ecstasy, which I am very glad to seek out.  I feel like I’ve missed something as we march silently to the waterfront, potatoes in hand. 

The genius of this show – much like Godbelly before it – is to show behaviour on balance and let us understand an alien experience deeper.  There’s some much appreciated insight, and many perspectives are presented without judgement.  I’m just not sure I’ve made the leap to wanting to join in.  

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