The merry go-round of relationships forming and breaking up is but one of the themes canvassed in award-winning Dunedin playwright Emily Duncan’s surreal and fascinating new play Hold Me, currently playing at Bats Theatre.

In what appears to be three unrelated vignettes in three different time periods Grace (Raquel Roderick), Stanza (Kristy Bruce) and Erik (Alex Greig) discuss aspects of their relationships and both the internal and external forces affecting these relationships, such as parents, particularly mothers and children.

The title also plays a significant part in each as holding on, be it through money, power or a sense of duty are elements displayed in each of the relationships. [More] 

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Playwright Emily Duncan has crafted a mature and sophisticated play in Hold Me and director Tabitha Arthur and their cast of three do it proud. The setting of black furnishings in BATS Theatre’s black box space alleviated by the ironic beauty of autumn leaves (Co-Production Designers Tabitha Arthur and Harriet Denby), abetted by Audrey Morgan’s selective lighting design and operation, draws our attention to the characters, and the fox fur coat.  

Billed as “A twisting, surrealist tale of love, money and war’, the production delivers on its invitation to “Come and inhabit our dark, gyroscopic world, and breathe its strange, special air.” As we spin almost imperceptibly through four time-frames – 1954, 2007, 1975, 1922 – the constants are people named Grace (Raquel Roderick), Stanza (Kirsty Bruce) and Erik (Alex Greig).

Part of the intrigue that holds our interest is the question of how they are related. Are they family names handed down through generations, or names purloined from illicit lovers or brief encounters that sparked an interest and, as with ‘Stanza’, offered a chance to break the monotony of more conventional names?

We discover the provenance of Stanza (meaning ‘standing place’) in the final scene (1922) when her returned WWI serviceman father (or is he?), Erik (meaning ‘ever’), describes her as, “The end of my line.” That’s the patriarchal, family name-carrying line, I assume, and of course his end was a new beginning.  

Whether the same-named characters are gen-Erik or simply generic may or may not matter, according to audience taste. As you engage with each character’s subjective experience, just going along for the ride may be reward enough. Others may want the “flecks of colour” to come together as a coherent whole in the way that impressed photographer Erik (1975) when, as a skinny little street-kid in Trafalgar Square, a kindly lady took him into a gallery for warmth.

Duncan, who is Dunedin-based, has set her play in England, by the way, possibly because deciduous English trees get more ‘autumnal’ and the socio-economic class has always been more obvious over there. Not that we haven’t had a class divide here for as long as we’ve had English trees. We don’t have foxes, though.

In the 2007 scene, at a Regent’s Park Café, I do wonder if this Stanza – who is London-based but has been to Hong Kong on a photography assignment – has actually grown up in NZ, given her Kiwi vowels, but it is never mentioned.

In 1954 (the opening scene), a sad but ever-elegant Grace reveals – in pensive monologue – that the fox fur coat used to belong to a skinnier person, that someone has “gypped” her, and she saw “her” with “him” at the opera. As the couple in the background – Erik and Stanza, presumably – dance sexily to Dean Martin’s marimba-rhythmed ‘Sway’, Grace’s concern is for the pups of the foxes (or wolves) whose mothers died for her coat.

The voice over (Chris Winchester), which sets each scene for us, also alerts us to how we align beauty with morals – giving the rouge Grace smears on her cheeks an ambiguous tone. Thus the underlying theme is set.

Stanza has the coat in 2007, at the Café du Lac, where her squash-playing London corporate financier ex-lover, Erik, is squeezing in a lunch date with her. The undercurrents here are strong as her preoccupation with her breasts turns poignant and his marital/family status causes stress. I interpret her lip-synching to a female rendition of ‘If You Go Away’ as a twist on the soliloquy device; likewise his lip-synching to ‘You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me’, which causes amusement because it, too, is sung by a woman.

At his 1975 flat in London, cockney photographer Erik’s lover-cum-patron is Grace who has a big house in the country with husband, family and horses. Her attitude to their ‘nouveau riche’ neighbours vies with her ‘slumming it’ in London and having to cope with the young, skinny, ‘clothes-hanger’ models he photographs, in exotic climes sometimes.

When Stanza arrives, having had the chat-up from Erik about being a model, and the business card as validation, both women get the feeling they should know each other. Stanza says she is “of these parts but not known here,” which is more grist to the questing audience-member’s mill. And this time it is Grace who lip-syncs ‘Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ to Stanza, and Stanza reciprocates.

And so to 1922 war-wounded Erik, in his wheelchair. He has just completed the Family History with all its begetting. I’m thinking I’d Google it if I could, except that would be no help unless someone else had added the subsequent ‘stanzas’. His grandfather made is fortune in timber and Erik “misses fox hunting”. Aha…

Raquel Roderick and Kirsty Bruce tend Erik unobtrusively as nurses, and of course it is an anachronism for them to sing – live, and beautifully – ‘You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me’ (written in 1962 by Smokey Robinson). It’s an odd choice that I can’t reconcile given the wealth of WWI songs on offer (‘We’ll Meet Again’, for example).

Brad Jenkin’s sound design includes a static sound which I take to be unintended and another effect I assume is water dripping. Later I discover the sound of a scratching record was intended, so I assume the other is a needle clicking when the record’s finished. All I can say is I didn’t ‘get’ them. I’m also told a technical mishap threw the lighting and sound cues out of sync and the fact we didn’t notice is a testament to the whole team.  

To summarise, then, autumn is the key: the fear of falling from the family tree; a series of scenes that capture the moments when dependence gives way to involuntary independence; when given the chance to let go, we can’t help saying, “Hold me.”

Enigmatic and intriguing as it plays out, Hold Me tunes us into a very real state of being. Why it is only on for five night beats me – so don’t delay your booking. 

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