We are coming out of BATS after the opening night performance of Wellingtonians and James says that there’s a whole genre of plays about young people flatting together. Tim says he liked the scenes where the flatmates talked about their hopes and dreams. James says he liked the strong storyline, but he wasn’t sure how well the hopes and dreams fitted into it. Tim says he didn’t really understand how the story worked.

Talking on the drive back home, we work out that a lot of the information we learned from the hopes and dreams is important to the play’s story. And we agree on a lot of other things we like about the show.

– So actually, it was a good play?
– Definitely. 
– We should say that in the review.
– Let’s do that.

Going back to the beginning, Wellingtonians starts loud with a short party scene with dancing, drinking and a bit of vomiting, and then quietens down considerably. Jack (Ethan Morse) has just arrived at his new flat, where he meets Aroha (Gypsy-Mae Harihona) and Charlie (Jacinta Compton). A fourth prospective flatmate, Cam (Mark Whittet), has dropped out because he and Aroha have just broken up. 

A sequence of ‘getting to know your flatmates’ scenes follows. Aroha is an artist who is creating a lot of pictures of Cam at the moment. Charlie loves to party. Jack is at Film School and is constantly filming the things around him. Cam lurks somewhere in the background; he’s a nasty piece of work, a judgement Aroha expresses in much stronger language (incidentally, if you suffer from the illusion that teenagers don’t swear, you may want to wear earplugs when attending this play). 

Our interest is held; the acting is excellent; the dialogue is vivid, economical, psychologically acute, often funny, sometimes touching; the portrayal of teenage flatting is convincing and well received by the mostly young opening night audience. But where’s it all going, if anywhere?

Well, that’s the thing – Wellingtonians turns out to have its own dark story to tell, and its own way of telling it. The way it slowly unfolds, only becoming clear in hindsight, is worth the price of admission alone.

Which is another kind of revelation as well: a lot of craft has gone into the plotting and writing of this play, much more than shows on the surface.

Some quibbles: the chronology of events isn’t always clear (but it doesn’t really matter); there are moments where you might wonder whether a character’s behaviour is believable; the beginning is a tad stiff, and the ending is a bit abrupt. 

Overall, the material is strong. What about the performances? As noted, the cast is uniformly excellent, and the video footage showing Jack’s films is as good as you could want to see, for its smoothly integrated contribution to the play’s atmosphere and action. 

The program doesn’t credit a writer, director, or person responsible for the video display, which seems a pity. They can be proud of their contribution to work of this quality, whoever they are.

Jack Elliott on sound and Olivia Flanagan on lighting also do an excellent job.

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