Limbo takes an intriguing, ambitious premise as its starting point. It focuses a wealth of creative power on turning its premise into a script and delivering it on stage. The acting is of a consistently high standard, the lighting design and delivery is exceptional. The storyline leads the audience down a series of well-crafted steps that take its central character progressively further into the depths of his misspent life. I find the ending genuinely moving.

This is all highly praiseworthy and yet … But before I get into the ‘and yets’, let me lay down some context.

Limbo’s main character is washed-up Kiwi comedian David Noble. We first meet David on a train, drunk and behaving badly, vaping and hitting on women passengers around him. A spirit figure, Virgil, appears and tells him that she is a manifestation of those who love him and don’t want him to go to hell. She is here to take him back over the wrongs in his life that he has left un-righted.

At first David doesn’t buy it. Interventions don’t work on me, he tells Virgil. However, it turns out that this time, he doesn’t have much choice.

Virgil’s technique is to take David through the scenes from his past which demonstrates how flawed his behaviour has been. David defends himself, but Virgil persists. Finally, David gets it, and … I don’t want to give the plot away, but the ending does an excellent job of tying everything together.

Limbo references the canonical fourteenth century epic, Dante’s Inferno. The connection is kept light, so there’s no need to spend a lot of time on Google before attending the play. Maybe it’s enough to know that Virgil is a benevolent figure with special powers and insights, and that David is somewhere on the brink of hell. Whether ‘hell’ is psychological, spiritual or supernatural, or possibly all three, I’m never sure, and the play seems to go with whatever works in the moment.

For most of the play, I find it hard to accept that David is a troubled soul in serious risk of damnation. Judging from what we see of his material, he is a terrible comedian, but this doesn’t seem like sufficient grounds for damnation – someone in the play suggests otherwise, but I think it’s a joke. He certainly behaves badly towards other people, but if that’s going to land you in hell, is there hope for any of us? (Well, none for me anyway.) Or maybe that is the play’s message – we are all damned in some sense if we don’t get our act together.

By the end of the play, though, we come to an emotional crime, or act of neglect on David’s part, that I can believe is both serious and needs to be addressed urgently.

One of the play’s strengths is the character of present-day David, as distinct from the talent-free sleazeball we see in the first flashback curated by Virgil. I enjoy the way David fights his corner against Virgil, refusing to accept that he might be wrong, always ready to come back with a counter-accusation. He may not be much of a comic, but he knows how to stand up for himself.

The character of David is a strong piece of writing, admirably delivered by Ben Lamb. I’m particularly impressed by the way Lamb conveys the change in emotional gears as we approach the play’s climax.

I find the character of Virgil slightly confusing – sometimes she seems to have just landed here from the 14^th century, sometimes she comes across as 100% contemporary. This is a minor niggle. I think I get the basic point of what Virgil is doing in the play, and appreciate the warmth and sensitivity of Ava O’Brien’s portrayal.

A lot of the heavy lifting in Limbo is done by the twins (Blake Boston and Sophie Helm). The twins appear in multiple guises, as generic scary demons and various supporting characters in Virgil’s flashbacks. Boston and Helm are kept busy switching between different roles, a task they both handle with smooth proficiency.

Individually or collectively, the cast has put a lot of work into the physical side of their acting – for example, Ava O’Brien’s magic passes, the lurching, swaying movements of passengers on a train – which I enjoy as a sheer display of actorly skill.

Lighting delivery and design strike me as a real tour de force – good work by Josiah Matagi and Ethan Cranefield. There’s a wonderful variety of sound effects (sound designer/operator Roco Moroi Thorn) but I find that the sound drowns out the dialogue at times. The stage action is well supported by the set (Nathan Arnott designer/builder, Lachlan Oosterman builder) and costumes (Ava O’Brien).

Director Kathy Keane has done a great job of bringing all these elements together.  

Congratulations to writers Tom Smith, Jimmy Williamson and Kathy Keane for coming up with this ingenious idea and turning it into a working script. I’ve said it already but I’ll say it again – loved the ending.

[See development season review here ]

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer