The premise of Bea Joblin’s comedy is brilliant. On the day the extended Hart family has gathered for Sinead Hart-Richards’ wedding to Dean Marshall, she has been jilted, her grandmother has suddenly died and her sister, Katherine Hart-Va’afusuaga, has gone into labour. So the expected festivities have given way to a blend of dismay, anger, grief and trying to cope while the anticipated joy of new life bides its time in the next room.

Births Deaths and Marriages the film, written and directed by Joblin, premiered in the 2019 NZ International Film festival – and if, like me, you found the hand-held home-video shooting style undermined its otherwise excellent elements, fear not. As the audience in a live theatre, we get to intuitively ‘frame’, ‘pan’, and ‘zoom in and out’ of the action according to what engages our interest. (This is why ALL live theatre is interactive.)

The wide strip of stage the BATS Dome space offers allows for a kitchen/dining area, a bathroom, a living room and a bedroom-with-birthing-pool to be accommodated (designed by Whitireia Stage & Screen Year 3 students & Tess Jamieson-Karaha). Charleigh Griffiths’ lighting design and operation draws focus, creates time-of-day-and-night moods, signifies time-jumps to span the weekend, and, accompanied by an ethereal flute, generates the odd spooky moment.

Joblin’s stage adaptation proves the script is ideal for drama schools because, along with judicious doubling and tripling, some of the roles can be re-purposed according to the cultural background, gender orientation and sexual preferences of the available cast. While some have to play well above their age, they wisely focus on the essence of character rather than overt attempts to ‘age up’.

Initially the family gathering, happening while the masked audience settles into their socially-distanced seats, seems normal enough except there is a fully-clad bride – Sinead (Ellie Springer) – in the bath. “We’ve lost Grandma,” is the opening line and – as gay grandson Philip, who insists his name is Storm (Casper Colville), seeks calmness in various New Age ways – his mother Ngaire (Ruby Carter) and aunt Pamela (Graxe Hadfield) bicker over whether their mother had a good life or not.

Pam’s daughter Tui (Maea Shepherd) seems the most devastated by Grandma’s death. Her sister, the heavily pregnant Katherine (Genoveva Reverte Neal), alternates between going to the loo – despite the presence of Sinead (the other sister) in the bath – and awaiting the next contraction in the birthing pool with her husband Ali (Caleb Pedro). Katherine and Ali’s banter, comparing and contrasting Irish and Samoan traditions around dead bodies, exemplifies Joblin’s skill with comedic dialogue.

Storm’s brother Hugh (Bon Turner-Buchanan) hides out in the kitchen, working on his laptop and trying to explain why his IT skills are not what his mother Ngaire needs to help launch her TV lifestyle show aspirations. Hugh is the first to see the somewhat traumatised failed bridegroom Dean Marshall (Kealan Schmidt) sneak in, at a loss as to how to make amends.

Completing the cast, Bella Petrie appears first as Alride Cuntswollen (sic), determined to get her share of the aborted wedding breakfast then as Tam Van Dyke, bringing food and holistic remedies for her best friend Tui’s grief, before becoming Dean’s mother Kerry and the midwife attending Katherine. And Graxe Hadfield contrasts her Pamela with a cameo as Paula, ex-wife of Pam and Ngaire’s AWOL or possibly dead brother, inappropriately timing her visit to enquire about her ex-mother-in-law’s will.

As all these lives interweave, relationships are revealed and developed, issues become resolved and a new life joins the family. It’s Kerry who, in comforting Tui, equates the way blood pumps through a heart with the way life pumps through a house – and it’s a heartbeat that bookends this essentially heart-warming production.

As well as managing the ebb and flow of the action with deceptive ease, director Tess Jamieson-Karaha (who played Katherine in the film) infused the whole cast with her innate understanding that truth, no matter how painful, produces quality comedy. 

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