The concrete floor of 70 Cable Street – the wet-weather venue for this second ‘Born in a Taxi’ contribution to the festival – looks most uninviting but today’s busloads of children don’t seem to care. They buzz in anticipation.

Much pomp, ceremony, bowing, parading, and indicating that applause is required, accompanies the drawn out entrance of the imperious Queen (Carolyn Hanna) attended by her fawning Pawn (Penny Baron) and subservient Knight (Nick Papas). All three are clowning manifestations of chess pieces, superbly costumed (no design credit provided).  

The sidekicks could benefit from having better-distinguished individual characters but given the trio’s major objective is to get the kids up and playing their ‘curious game’, I guess that’s not a priority.

First, however, the Queen’s dominance must be asserted through ritual moves. To punish those who step out of line, she wields a whacker (a velvet-covered soft cardboard tube), personally administering to the backsides of her minions then allowing children from the audience to do the honours. The high point for the kids is when a line of teachers, who have failed to follow the implied orders, are wacked.

There are two interpretations of this opening phase: either the kids are being taught to conform to the dictates of a despot, or sufficient discipline is being cleverly exerted to allow the game itself to proceed in an orderly manner. Certainly when volunteers are called for, to face each other across the huge rolled out chess board, chaos does not ensue and what follows is great fun.

It’s a sophisticated game of ‘musical squares’ where the rules for each phase are indicated by the queen holding up a white card, a black card or both; an arrow pointing left, right, up or down; a straight line held at various angles; a circle, numbers, random combinations of any of the aforementioned … etc. The contestants have to keep their wits about them – and eliminations are well handled.

The winner gets to become queen (or king), sit on the throne, whack the ex-queen, get paraded for applause and join the cast for a curtain call sequence that’s just as convoluted as their entrance was.

Schools around Wellington may now expect pupils who have seen this show to make their own whackers and attempt to acquire status and control with them. Charming.
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