Very much ‘in development’, Bottled is a play that wants to be a film. Or it needs to be thoroughly reworked to engage the audience at the relevant levels to make its point. The Little Big Voice group is keen to be reviewed, however, so here goes.  

The idea is that we are attending a wine tasting-cum-lecture from one Mr Kingsford (Shauwn Peter Ethan Keil), introduced by his charming assistant, Sandra (Ngareta Samuel-Marshall). Mr Kingsford has an old scar down one side of this head – and while it is never mentioned, the story of how it came about slowly emerges from the plethora of brief scenes that punctuate the wine tasting action.

While the show is billed as “an engaging, interactive theatrical experience”, Kingsford is an alienating wine snob: supercilious and unfriendly. This is intended, of course, but if we are to be encouraged to participate more, perhaps Sandra could be more available to mediate.

Mind you, Ngareta Samuel-Marshall also plays two other roles: clear-headed Aroha, who helps the facilitator of a Youth Alcohol Support Group, and the surly, angry, hoodie-covered Tony, who is supposed to be handling her addiction by attending the meetings.

Other young addicts are the introverted Devon and the unstable, compulsively reckless Eddie – both played by Cary Stackhouse (the playwright). With headwear, or the lack of it, their only changes of costume, Ngareta and Cary do an impressive job of distinguishing their characters – sometimes when all four are interacting in the same scene.

This, and the brevity of the scenes, works against creating any depth in the characters or the relationships. And the intercutting of their mini-scenes, and even briefer stabs of random behaviour, with the wine-tasting scenario, requires us to become so preoccupied with working out where we are and who is who that what is actually happening takes second place. Also, too often what they are saying is unintelligible, through gabbling, mumbling, loss of volume at the end of phrases and a general failure to find the ‘pitch’ of the space (all part of an actor’s craft that the audience should take for granted).

Of course what they are saying may not be important – but how are we to know that if we can’t comprehend it? As film performances they may work (although the modern tendency to prioritise ‘authentic voice’ over intelligibility is counterproductive, in my opinion, and probably exacerbated by everyone on set and location having a script, so all well aware of what’s being said, then sound editors working in soundproof suites … But I digress).

My assumption that Aaron (Ivan Siemonek), the group facilitator, is licensed as a professional counsellor has to be re-thought as his behaviour deteriorates. Is he just some random volunteer, totally unsupervised? Or has he taken it on himself to set up a private enterprise to educate at risk youth to properly appreciate high quality wine and spirits? Such questions are good to raise in a drama – if they are answered; if our attention and trusting investment are rewarded. But here they are not.

It takes a while to see that the Youth scenes are in the past and for a while I conclude we are witnessing flashbacks in Mr Kingsford’s alcohol-addled brain, raining the question of where he stood in relation to those events – but no one character is present for all those scenes, so that theory doesn’t stack up.

As for the ‘point’ of the play … There is a surprise twist at the end that I can’t reveal here except to say it answers the questions about the scar and how he’s connected to the backstory. But, for me at least, the revelation doesn’t distil an abiding truth about his individual psychology, the society in which such a scenario may unfold, or the nature of addiction as an overarching theme.  

I do get, and appreciate, the play-on-words in the title. But a good wine is more than the label. Even taking its young age into account, the blend is unsatisfactory – prematurely bottled, one might say. The process needs to be re-interrogated at every stage: harvesting, crushing and pressing, fermentation, clarification, and aging.

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