“If you can remember the 1960s, you weren’t really there,” is one of those resonant quotes about the era that spawned a defining era of music, fashion, science and the arts. Palmy’s Centrepoint Theatre wasn’t really ‘there’ until 1974, so by definition is perfectly qualified to stage a Kiwi-oriented musical memoire of the previous decade.

This opening stanza of Centrepoint’s 50^th anniversary season enjoyed a full-house, underscoring local support for what is now the second-oldest extant professional theatre in the country. And it’s in Palmy North – well-known (of course) for being a “dingy disagreeable desolate cultural wasteland” somewhere up the motu from Wellington… Who’da thought!

Congratulations Centrepoint on achieving a half century of theatrical entertainment.

The BeatGirls’ charismatic Andrea Sanders brought the 80s version of what was a Covid constricted season of Cringeworthy to the theatre in 2021 and a 70s version in 2022. The concept therefore has a tried-and-tested format that combines four voices, slick moves and plenty of sass that’s crisply arranged, coordinated, choreographed and accordingly costumed. There are miniskirts and knee-high boots, big hair and Mary Quant bobs, Carnaby Street and a razzle of psychedelic patterns and designs before ‘gettin’ hippy wit’ it’ towards the flower power and paisley end of the decade. Just as the 60s had no real plot, neither does this show. Chuck in a few historical, social and cultural segues and its ‘bingo for boomers’!

An energised, animated jukebox live from the Slippery Shag Lava Lounge, Cringeworthy bounces irrepressibly from tune to tune and style to style. From time to time the audience gets to join in with some (frighteningly) familiar refrains – which must mean that most of us weren’t really ‘there’ either.

Mandy, Sandy, Candy and Bob – Sanders, Jared Pallesen, Emma Katene and Jthan Morgan – get their 60s groove on and keep it tight as they revisit the advent of ‘New Zillun’ TV, The Beatles, The Stones; the six o’clock swill; dances such as ‘The Duck’, ‘The Swim’, ‘The Fugue’, ‘The Watusi’ and ‘The Twist’, along with a range of Kiwi music acts.

Dinah Lee, Ray Columbus, The Chicks, Mr Lee Grant (who before becoming popstar famous was Bogdan Kominowski – a primary teacher at Palmy’s West End school), Sandy Edmonds, Maria Dallas, Alison Durbin and John Rowles are recalled and at times affectionately parodied. Of course, overseas artists also get a workout – Englebert Humperdinck’s 10 Guitars features, alongside The Seekers, Helen Shapiro, The Monkees, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, The Four Seasons, The Hollies, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and The Archies.

Pocket dynamo Pallesen makes quite an impression as Ray ‘She’s A Mod’ Columbus, for some astonishing eyeball acrobatics, and a full-on Frankie Valli falsetto – but there are no slackers in this hyperactive ensemble. Together, they infuse the piece with an extraordinary energy. The only niggle comes when a backing track is occasionally set too loud, submerging the vocals – a matter easily tweaked.

A lightweight plot-free zone it may be, but Cringeworthy’s infectious effervescence, colourful theatrical twirls, vocal variety and happy carefree Kiwi (mostly) vibe can’t be denied – or, as Noël Coward observed in Private Lives some three decades and a world war earlier, “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.” This Cringeworthy sashays through the 60s at a thousand miles an hour.

That 60s sounds and accessories still resonate more than five decades on is part of the era’s fascination. No one, though, actually had to be ‘there’ in order to appreciate its nostalgic charm, on show at Centrepoint right here and now.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Cringeworthy, after previously addressing the ’70s and ’80s is now back with a stunning dissection of the ’60s. I saw it last night but am still tingling. At one stage I felt the theatre was going to slip into the harbour and motor across to Eastbourne driven by waves of audience enthusiasm. This is the feel good show to beat them all.

Devised and directed by Beat Girls star and mastermind Andrea Sanders, Cringeworthy is yet another inspired scoop way down into our late-colonial social history via popular music. It tells, sings, dances across those 10 hinge years when New Zealand started to join the less inhibited world of “letting it all hang out” and having fun before wooden box time.

Personally, I had experienced the first three years of the 60s in nascent Swinging Britain where irreverent Beatlemania had dissolved the feet of clay of the hitherto snooty musical and social establishments. There were Merseybeat groups practically performing in telephone booths across the land. I played keyboards in a private songs-with-grog-and-bingo club. With a drummer I became used to backing 55 year olds with bald spots (and naff names like Brad Stephens) murdering All my Lovin’. They were just about putting Merseysound in the tea by then.

On my arrival in Godzone I detected a major step back. The country was still, emotionally, mired in the 50s. The prevailing zeitgeist had stuck with dour All Blacks rucking their pitiless way upfield in World War One fashion (“never mind the ball get on with the game”). That was the height of couth. Singers of bubble gum love songs were just Grade A “poofters”.  Grim-faced marching girls were drilling to whistled commands. Enter TV, stage left.

As this show rightly points out, infant television was the unlikely artistic catalyst. It made the impossible possible and on a national scale. (Oddly derided by the national rugby side that refused to have live TV tests and wrote to the NZBC moaning there was “too much soccer” on the box). Working out of cramped tiny studios with derisory budgets the local singers and dancers had an unassailable leg-in to our TV screens: the entire world was happlily drowning in Brit and revitalized US pop. (Like World War two, it was in all the papers.) Vulgar it may be but … there was no alternative.

At the middle of this uniquely NZ situation is where Ms Sanders has astutely positioned the First Act; one which abounds with visual cleverness and smart theatrical choices. The Scott Maxim TV studio set is unashamedly basic with a cheeky nod to the rather ill-shaped woodwork that was the hallmark of trailblazer C’mon. It had that No8 fencing wire ambience and, of course, was in harsh 625-line black and white. That stark pop art structure of 60 years ago reappears miraculously before our eyes along with the Tip Top Trumpet monochrome swirl marking out the dance floor. The costumes glaringly match this severe vision. It is like being on the spot in the studio as the team belts out the first salvoes of Kiwis having a go, at something other than rucks and lineouts.

Overall the two act piece features around 25 songs (only three of which are in a medley). Entire songs are very properly, the general rule. Of the ones in the first Act about half were recorded by local artists (Dinah Lee, Ray Columbus, Allison Durban, Mr Lee Grant, Maria Dallas and The Chicks) but that was the way it was; the rest feature The Beatles, Seekers, Hollies and their exalted likes. All but a tiny handful of these are rendered, in my view, more powerfully than by the original artists.

I particularly appreciate that no list of songs features in the show programme. With consummate shrewdness Ms Sanders decided that they appear in a flyer for pick-up after the show; thus avoiding the pitfall of making the show a retrospective visual ‘album’. Serendipity reigns throughout. (I will maintain her sharp insight as best I can in this review).

The tunes are underscored by two pulsating go-go dancers (Amedee Wilson and Annnabella Milburn) and interspersed with elucidating chat emphasising that so many of our budding mini-stars of the 60 were whizzed over to Oz where they were in serious demand. There is impressive research dropped into all this but it never feels preachingly academic or mere padding. Who knew, for instance, that Ray Columbus might actually have joined US group The Monkees had the moon spun slightly differently? Either way, we eventually lost promising performers Grant, Durban, Dallas and Lee to ‘overseas’. C’est la vie – as well as a back-handed compliment.

This first Act and its bold television format is a staging challenge. While its studio look is engagingly authentic it poses questions in maintaining interest, absent multiple camera viewpoints and dynamics. Dance as frenetically as you may, and they do, but you could risk the stage wide vista seeming static. But it doesn’t. That is because the well-conceived lighting plot and the skilled use of the stage lays a robust platform for thunderously delivered songs; numbers that simply blow the audience away.

I have never experienced a version of one particular Helen Shapiro number as strongly toe-tapping and uplifting as this one. It is a revelation. The opening Lulu number at the start has been delivered with full-on pace while the Four Seasons piece provokes squeals of delight and chills down the spine as it ricochets between accurate falsetto and hard booming bass.

Act Two takes me completely by surprise. The calculatedly stark black-and-white Act One set becomes suffused with kaleidoscopic warm colours. The whole feel changes. Gone are the Quant-style black and white mini clothing. In come second wave sophisticated hippy clobber: Momma Cass wig and gown, orange leather cap and the white Humperdinck suit so becoming of pop royalty.

It creates a more reflective base. Thought replaces vigour but with no appreciable loss of energy. Now, instead of the authors weaponising it with an overwhelming wall-of-sound number we get two sets of sweetly nostalgic harmonies and pop philosophising. It is to be all offshore artists now. The polished but angst-ridden world of Simon & Garfunkel, the caramel flowing rich baritones of Humperdinck/Rowles.

The beat veers up then rockets down. The almost constant backing track works wonders. It invites the crowd to join in the fun whereupon the whole theatre becomes the show – an indoor Woodstock. The rock classics lift the roof and the multi generation punters join in. The Ray Charles encore piece is utterly breath-taking.

This is impressive teamwork, great stage design, seasoned plotting of moves and visual nous on a grand scale. Along with ‘auteur’ Andrea Sanders (who lives and breathes the bizzo) we have a dedicated and hard-working cast. They never miss a beat and treat each number as an opportunity to impart another attitude ‘of certain time and place’ that makes two hours in theatre reveal ten years of our now disappearing lives.

Jthan Morgan is by turns facilitator, subtle and sly commentator but most of all a toppermost of the poppermost singer. Jared Pallesen and Rebecca Ansell fit in beautifully to all sound and movement ensuring that all six cylinders never stop firing (the former bravely rendering Mr Lee Grant’s star song under a bombardment of women’s underwear).  

So much of the atmosphere and the social viewpoints depend on the tech element. Mitch Sigley and Gabrielle Eaton deserve special praise for the lighting design. The huge investment in this and the other staging aspects ofCringeworthy – Swinging in the 60s are reflected in the fact that the crews involved total more than cast onstage. No mean commitment of effort, that.

Andrea Sanders herself figures in no less than four vital production aspects ranging from costumes to choreography (also a proud team effort).  Georgia Davenport’s stage management is impeccable. This show feels like a smooth confident last night of a long run not a first.

Every empty seat between now and 29 April is a missed opportunity to savour an important facet of our national and inner life. One that was partly scrapped over in seedy back rooms in a fledgling television service and came out the other side in mature good heart. On the world vista, the affection that quality pop has engendered across so many years is quietly evident is this enthralling and memorable slice of theatre.  Just watch the singers’ rapt faces as they sing it.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer