There can hardly be a better place than Dunedin for an aspiring playwright. Opportunities abound to have your script taken seriously, to be critiqued and encouraged, to have your play workshopped by real actors and directors, and quite possibly given a full production.

Allen Hall at Otago University is the busiest theatrical venue in the country, often commissioning its own NZ premieres. In the Fortune Hutchinson Studio, Playmarket – NZ’s iconic playwrights’ agency and script advisory service – has been running a terrific series of professional readings of new scripts, while the Mayfair and Playhouse also regularly showcase local writing talent.

The Globe, too, is eager to support new writers. Its proud history includes works by James K. Baxter, Janet Frame, R.A.K Mason, Renée, Robert Lord, Roger Hall, Harry Love, Simon O’Connor, Nigel Ensor and Emily Duncan. The current production, A Cup of Tea and a Biscuit, is the first foray into scripting by its foremost set designer, Andrew Cook. He has chosen to set his play in a mythical English village, aptly named Dullsford.

There has been some discussion on this site regarding what makes a New Zealand play. To my mind, it’s the same as asking what makes a New Zealander. Reminds me of a favourite childhood rhyme by Walter de la Mare:
It’s a very odd thing –
As odd as can be –
That whatever Miss T. eats
Turns into Miss T.

Applied to the spirit rather than the stomach, it suggests we are the sum of our experiences. While some recent plays, like The Middlemarch Singles Ball, have been decidedly NZ in their setting, others, such as Richard Huber’s Glorious, and now A Cup of Tea, most definitely belong elsewhere. Where Huber was influenced by the glamour and wisecracking of 30s Hollywood films, however, Cook seems to draw on those gritty North of England movies where everyone’s down on their luck.

The characters of A Cup of Tea and a Biscuit are universal, but do seem to fit most cosily into an English village, which, as it happens, is where Cook himself originated. He has concocted a bunch of cheerful losers, the highlight of whose week is the regular visit to the community hall by a motivational speaker. On this particular Thursday evening, Barbara, an expert on business and personal development, has urged them to "make tomorrow the first day of the rest of your life".

She is then thrust into a situation familiar to us all: trapped with a cuppa in one hand and a bickie in the other, while some bore buttonholes us. In fact, poor Barbara has been virtually kidnapped (the air let out of her tyres) as they determine to get their money’s worth – not by absorbing more of her wisdom, but by impressing her with their own, dubious achievements. She manages to be determinedly polite, but is hardly impressed. "You were lying in bed to teach your wife a lesson?!"

The set is attractive, an old hall with unusual props spread around the supper-laden tables – watch for Stan carefully building a tower of the tired sandwiches – and the costumes appropriately ludicrous. The plot is slender and would benefit from a storyline for Barbara herself, but the situation is agonisingly recognisable and entertaining, while experienced director Brian Beresford has choreographed plenty of lively movement.

The strength of the play lies in the characters; the sort of hilarious eccentrics it would be ghastly actually to know, but who with good reason are the mainstay of successful TV sitcoms. You can enjoy conversational inanity as long as you’re not having to respond to it.

The actors perform with energy and enthusiasm, especially Mary Greet, reaching surrealistic heights as a pseudo-evangelical confectioner, and Brian Kilkelly, revealing ever more horrible body parts as he details the episodes that have gained him the nickname Stone-dead Stan. I’d love to see these two in Dickens.

Meantime a frantic Don Knewstubb tries fussily to control them, Doug Legget and Phil Cole compete in the misfit stakes, and the comparatively thankless role of Barbara is valiantly played by Denise Casey.

Plays about losers seem to have been a bit of a recurring theme at the Globe recently. Perhaps in a recession, we need to feel better about ourselves by observing others who are worse off; a sort of schadenfreude. The likeable thing about this particular bunch of oddities is that they simply don’t know they’re losers. As one of them says while talking of reality TV, "At least I’m not a fat bastard living in a filthy house with demon children on a diet of fish and chips."

If the Vicar of Dibley appeals, this is sure to be your cup of tea: engaging light relief for Christmas. And three cheers to the Globe, and our other theatres, for their continuing promotion of home-grown talent.
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Bores come in many varieties, and in A cup of tea and a biscuit we meet a prize selection. Take Stan (Brian Kilkelly): hypochondriac, gourmand and sandwich sculptor, or Ross (Phil Cole), whose serial failures are all someone else’s fault.

Judith (Mary Greet) has a lucrative little sideline in half-wit religion, Graham’s (Don Knewstubb) pets are the world’s most interesting, and Dave’s (Doug Leggett) weak cynicism is the only thing that stops him from having no personality at all.

Pity poor Barbara (Denise Casey). She’s a travelling motivational speaker who has all the audience’s sympathy when the traditional cup of tea and biscuit, and let-down tyres, trap her in the village hall with these nutcases, testing her patience, politeness, and tolerance of personal space invasion almost beyond endurance.

Andrew Cook, the Globe Theatre’s talented set designer and builder and sometime actor, has extended his talents into writing for the stage, and this is his first play. His characters are well-conceived, but could perhaps be further developed, and some of the dialogue could advantageously be trimmed.

The play, however, has many strong points, not least its ability to entertain with highly irritating characters. The ending, which comes after Barbara imparts the only bit of self-knowledge the villagers really listen to, is truly poignant.

Brian Beresford’s experienced direction ensures a good pace and plenty of visual interest.

A cup of tea and a biscuit will run until December 12.
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For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer