“I’m sorry this won’t be the video you’re expecting,” is sadly utteres as the prologue to The Basement Company’s Virtual Extravaganza. Fair warning. Extravaganza: noun an elaborate and spectacular entertainment or production.  

The promo has asked us to prepare ourselves for “a smorgasbord of virtual theatrics … Lockdown diaries, apocalypse fashion montages, stage combat coached by The Dust Palace’s Mike Edward & Eve Gordon, juggling coached by David Ladderman … and much more – this show has it all.”

I am keen to discover how such a show has been “Devised and recorded from 14 homes around the Manawatū” and assume there were virtual classes and coaching involved in planning this “genuine response to an extraordinary time in history, through the eyes of the young artists living it”.

Of course this is a tech-savvy generation for whom it is natural to record and share their lives via smart electronic devices. I assume director Lizzie Tollemache offered provocations to the youth members of Basement Company languishing in Lockdown and they responded in various ways. Then Video designer Henrique Beirao assembled the raw material and edited it into this 17-minute compilation of their individual yet collective experiences over four weeks.

The intro clips of the 14 performers suggest a promising range of personalities and approaches to the predicament they find themselves in – mostly positive, in line with the upbeat music.

Week One, introduced by Ollie (or is that Oliver?), suggests establishing a routine and Mollie obliges by taking us through a day in her life in a consciously hyper-performed manner: food, clothes, screen-time, exercising – with judicious jump-cuts and clever editing. This is counterpointed with inserts of Kip taking us on his “government sanctioned” daily walk and an exhorting us to “Listen to Jacinda.” Mollie’s minimalist diet tips and list of where to follow her suggest she is satirising Influencers. 

Jake demonstrates his early juggling progress with two balls. A somewhat manically bored noodle-cooking Gabby gets excited about holding her own funeral – and a motor cyclist in some Gaming app takes a wrong turn and is told he’s committed suicide. Quick cut from Gabby’s dinner plate to Alyssa, about the cut her long dark hair – after popping a bottle of bubbly. Then Kip’s attempt to get excited over his iced coffee is tagged with an ornately written, “I’m going insane, when does this end again?”

A montage of bizarre Apocalypse Fashion (you’ll have to pause the fleeting frames to notice the creative detail) takes us into Week Two, where the need to get out of bed and get going – for what? – is evoked. Kate Rose uses her screen camera as a mirror to put on her makeup and murmurs to it in some strange language – then Alyssa takes us on a wry little tour of a deserted Feilding.

As ukulele strumming Gabby wants us to understand she is “more of a man than a horse” and vice versa, Jake, in a split-off screen, demonstrates his juggling progress – is that with balled-up socks? Another montage evokes the repetitive nature of this so-called lifestyle.

A ‘Scariest Witch’ montage covers more hours of sartorial invention in mere seconds to introduce Week Three, where the topic is ‘Little things that annoy me’. Simon Bridges and his Pandemic Response Committee, being cooped up, having to work on the first anniversary if a grandmother’s death, the repetitive routine … As the issue of emotional instability comes into the frame the tone changes. Despite more attempts by more people to juggle, stress is coming to the fore …  

And violence breaks out in a splendid – and I trust therapeutic – stage combat sequence where assaults on various kinds are transmitted from screen to screen. The ultimate weapon is a brilliant stroke – and I’m not giving the show away here.  

Week Four addresses the emotional toll of Lockdown before everyone finds solace and a renewal of sorts in dancing – and juggling.

My first impression of The Basement Company’s Virtual Extravaganza was that it was a bit ‘once over lightly’ but a second viewing has made me realise it is a valuable social record of how young, creative people in the Manawatū have experienced Lockdown, March-April 2020.

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