Am I bovvered? I should be.

First, everyone’s turned up for a 7pm show only to find the ‘Doors’ are not the opening act, the show doesn’t start until 8pm, so the Opera House foyers are awash with people drinking. Fortunately it’s a balmy evening and Te Aro Park over the road is a good spot to sit and wait. Meanwhile those who have taken their seats early are treated to a slideshow promoting the merchandise available back in the foyer.

Second, it turns out the promoter doesn’t want to give me a programme so I have to buy one ($15) to find out who wrote and directed the show, who the other creatives and actors are … Not that it tells us who is playing whom. As for our seats, well …

But bovvered we are not. It’s a party with old friends who have not aged a bit even though BBC2 TV series was launched 14 years ago. Actually Nan looks younger: she’s had a facelift – which is to say her facedrop has not been added because the interval would have been the only opportunity to add the latex prosthetics and that honour goes to Derek Faye (of whom more later).  

Do some of you not know what I’m talking about? So-rry. But while it is clear the theatre is brimming with long-term fans tuning into couch-born nostalgia, you don’t have to have been fully immersed to recognise the archetypes personified in this Tate gallery. And they are so extreme, they get away with un-PC attitudes more commonly displayed by adult puppets and ventriloquist dolls.  

“Catherine Tate creates characters who are so over the top as to be almost cartoon-like and this is where her genius lies,” the BBC was moved to state in 2007, in response to complaints at the way the Northern Irish were depicted in a Christmas special. “Her comedy is never meant to offend any viewer and is always based on satire and grotesque exaggeration.”[i]

Take Bernie (Bernadette), the randy Irish nurse, who is first up in the live show. Her appallingly inappropriate behavior – suffered by a chap (Alex Carter) waiting for his mum to come out of surgery, and the matron (Niky Wardley) on the verge of giving her the boot – finally reflects back on her. Is she over-compensating for chronic loneliness?

Or office worker Kate who ignores the pressing deadline Ellen (Wardley) is trying to meet, to regale her with the latest brag about her lifestyle – then sets the “Guess – just guess – go on, it’s fun!” trap. It’s on the third iteration of this sketch that Tate’s Kate gets her come-uppance.

Then there’s the xenophobic couple Janice and Ray (Carter), whose complaints about their trip abroad can only make us thankful we don’t have to live their poor, diminished lives. It’s during this sketch, by the way, that the fact they are actors playing out roles is fully acknowledge – as a moustache slips, line are lost … It’s a wink and nudge to the audience that, like the way they dance off after each sketch, tells us it all just a bit of a lark, belying the astonishing talent Tate brings to each character with spot-on support from her cast and crew.

I should also mention that the company has gone to admirable lengths to drop in the names of local places and people, happily eschewing all geographical logic, given the original locations of their sketches – invariably established with the back-projected images (by Sam Pattinson) that embellish designer Ric Lipson’s simply effective settings. Those localizing touches are hugely appreciated in Wellington. 

Most impressive are the scenes pre-recoded at our very own The Edge radio studio, where show-hosts many will recognize (sorry, I’m always tuned to RNZ) try to tell one Mrs Joannie Taylor (aka ‘Nan’) she has won a free ticket to the Catherine Tate Show Live and convince her to leave her ‘programme’ and go to it via the limo they are sending.  

These video inserts are not all that fill the necessary breaks between live scenes. Tate offers other favourite characters in cameo and there’s a series of cuts to the control room where two technical operator mates – played by Brett Goldstein and Tate (also the co-writers of the live show) – gradually discover they are both single again: a movingly bonding scenario.

But back to the live show:

Tate treats us to an actress called Charlotte who, while playing Lady Macbeth’s “out damned spot” scene in a dress rehearsal, keeps lapsing into Frankie Howerd-cum-Kenneth Williams impressions – which, I suggest, only register fully for audience members of a certain age.

“Have you heard about our John? He’s a gay man now,” is the way John Reilly’s oh-so-progressive Mum (Tate) introduces the scene where she tries to find a partner for her son John (David O’Reilly) – and here is where the audience participation kicks in (front two rows of the stalls, be warned).

In a bedroom scene, Sam (Tate) and Paul (Carter, I think – sorry, they’re both such chameleons) are a couple who entertain each other – and us – hugely by finding the most mundane life experiences hysterically funny. The Tim Tam Challenge story is one out of the proverbial box.

Anyone who saw Tate’s surly, back-chatting schoolgirl Lauren Cooper killed in a kayaking accident in the 2007 Christmas Special – whence her epitaph read: “I still ain’t bovvered” – will be delighted to know she is resurrected for this show. She and her mates Ryan (O’Reilly) and Lisa (Wardley) have wandered into the Circus Museum where a circus impresario (Carter) tells them the sad tale of legendary knife-thrower Chung Ling Soo, whose ‘wall of death’ is on display. So what does Lauren do? Your gob will be smacked. Suffice to say stage illusionist Paul Kieve is credited as Co-deviser/Special Effects for this sketch.

After interval, Tate is unrecognisable as bald-as-a-billiard-ball and obviously gay Derek Faye, who repudiates any enlightened attempt to acknowledge his orientation: “How very dare you!” Here we find him in a voting booth attended by Wardley’s scrutineer and O’Rielly’s politician – who breaks all sorts of laws by campaigning for votes on election day. But the satire lands where it should. 

Geordie Georgie’s latest charity cause, inflicted on workmate Martin (Carter, I think) is online porn addicts. As usual the target here is moral hypocrisy.  

When the multilingual translator fails to show at a Global Diversity Inc symposium, Claire the receptionist comes to the aid of the keynote speaker (Wardley), allowing Tate to let rip with vestigial French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish and Congolese. What may be perceived as equal-opportunity insults to all native languages is redeemed by Tate’s actual ability to speak whole phrases very well. Again it’s the ‘above herself’ character who takes the fall.

At last Joannie ‘Nan’ Taylor arrives, to command not only the stage but the whole auditorium – or the front stalls, at least. The magic of metatheatrics allows her to segue from the elaborate set-up for getting her here to becoming a patient in the hospital set, alongside long-suffering ‘Terry’ (Carter) in an adjoining bed with double pneumonia and pleurisy. Grandson Jamie (O’Rielly) gets stick for looking nothing like his original – to the delight of devoted fans – and the way the Australian Nurse (Wardley) speaks is mercilessly critiqued and not-understood by Nan despite her displaying none of the alleged linguistic faults.

Now I can’t reveal what happens next except to say we enter another realm and Billy Connolly makes a guest appearance via video to participate in a twist or three on the Everyman imperative of accounting for your sins as you face eternity. It’s a stunner.

‘Enjoy Yourself’ is the closing song – until the curtain call where the fashion for stage stars to step forward and espouse a socio-political cause is beautifully sent-up, albeit for a very worthy group which is well represented on the night.

So is everyone happy as we depart? This is for sure: no face looks bovvered.

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