Since this is a play about the North Shore and exposing the truth, best I should start the same way: I lived on the North Shore for a few months. I didn’t care for it much. It felt like the 1950s (it wasn’t) and I didn’t care for the ’50s much either. So I moved back over the bridge. To Auckland, and the 21^st century. So there.

I feel much better for coming clean about that. There’s something cathartic about telling the truth.

Fortunately Gavin Puts Things Straight also tells the truth, not only by exposing the narrative of the play, but also via the medium of some archetypical North Shore characters. Gavin’s North Shore I liked very much indeed.

In fact, visits to the Pumphouse Theatre are always enjoyable. The service is always agreeable, the theatre immaculate and parking accessible. There’s the late night view of the lake with the lights, the reflections and the wildlife. There’s a nice glass of wine if you wish … all very yummy.

But back to the play – and the production.

Written and directed by Andy Saker who grew up in Takapuna, trained at RADA/King’s College and returned to found Devonport Theatre Company, Gavin Puts Things Straight is billed as “a bittersweet comedy” and this is exactly what it is. It’s riddled with great lines – some character-driven, some just plain clever – and has a tightly structured dramatic narrative, both of which allow the production to glide between humour and pathos with a seamless ease.

Saker has a remarkable feel for the vernacular and his considerable experience as a theatre practitioner is evidenced in the subtle shaping and angling of the numerous and varied vignettes to gain maximum theatrical and emotional impact. There are diminutive resonances of the late Bruce Mason in the structure of the text (Courting Blackbird and The End of the Golden Weather) and echoes of Roger Hall at his best in the dialogue and characters (Social Climbers and The State of the Play), which speaks volumes for Saker’s creative potential. A finely crafted piece, it achieves all it sets out to achieve.  

First productions of new plays are fraught with difficulty, mainly because until they are put before an audience, it’s not really clear what is being dealt with. Director and actors may think the material funny but what if the audience takes it seriously – or vice versa? The whole shebang can come undone if cast and director have, somehow, missed the boat. One thing is for sure though: the audience won’t. Miss the boat, that is. 

In this case the production serves the play well, as evidenced by the good-sized audience’s supportive response, but there was still a hint that the cast had yet to fully live in their first-rate characters. Whilst already subtly tinted and delicately played, they can develop further and, with the season running until 14 May, there is time for this fleshing out to take place.

There is also the question of whether the playwright is the best person to undertake directing the first production of their new play. Saker brings this off but the question remains: what would an outside eye, working with the playwright, add to the experience? Possibly nothing, but the question is always worth asking.

Gavin Puts Things Straight is a family snapshot, a cleverly contrived exposition-in-a-minor-key featuring a granddad, a son, the son’s ex wife and her new husband, two grandsons, the eldest grandson’s girlfriend and a neighbour. North Shore residents all, they are linked by blood, familiarity, proximity, and the essentially Kiwi motifs of “he’s a good bloke when you get to know him” and “look, I’m sorry about last night.” The men are more important to the plot than the women but each is drawn with equal dexterity and affection.

For Gavin to put things straight, of course, there has to be something bent and there is. We get to hear about it and, subsequently, to see this disparate group work in something approximating harmony to reconnect as a family because “they’re all good blokes when you get to know them” – and we all love a happy ending.

At the centre of the narrative is Keith, the divorced, solo parent, played with extraordinary courage by David Mackie. It’s fair to say that Keith is a mess. Even in his own home he looks like he doesn’t know where to put himself. He mumbles a bit, shuffles a lot and envelops it all in an assortment of male posturing that would have made Crumpy proud. He is at odds with his sons (Gavin and James), his neighbour and most of all his ex wife. Mackie makes actor choices that at times seem bewildering but, at his point of crisis, they all come together and make perfect sense in a denouement that was powerful enough to stop the audience in its tracks and to generate one of those silences that defy description.

Noelene, ex wife of Keith, mother of Gavin and James and new wife of Duane is played by the ever gorgeous Louise Wallace. As the plot wrenches us around, Wallace moves freely through the role, always believable, and always the equal of any adversary – whoever that might be. It’s easy to recollect that Wallace has done all this before and always extraordinarily well. She builds relationships beautifully on stage and none better in this instance than with Gavin’s girlfriend Karen.

Karen (Rachel King) is quite simply perfect and it must be said that Gavin is a very lucky man. The mere existence of a girlfriend gives this archetypical Kiwi bloke a credibility that the character needs to make the play work – and it does. He must be OK because he has this girlfriend who is beautiful, brainy, feisty, loyal and chic. Ingenious writing this, and even smarter casting.

James (Daniel Bonner), the youngest son, is another clever creation. As unlike his father and brother as chalk is to cheese, James is a school-loving, bookish, stay-at-home teenager who avoids engagement with anyone else by reading ‘the Scottish play’. He is bright, loves Shakespeare, poignantly quotes Wilde (“children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them”) and, when his father is at his lowest ebb, subtly takes his hand as they sit together at the dining table in one of the more touching moments of the production.

Duane (Allan Roberts) is the new husband of five years. He’s big, he’s brash and he’s blokey; he’s larger than life, proudly uneducated, a successful entrepreneur; he’s everything Keith isn’t and he’s a pain in the derriere. We’re told that “he’s good bloke when you get to know him” but there is little real evidence of this. He opens a shop selling gluten free tequila and nicotine infused vodka to health conscious North Shore residents and we’re satisfied, but not surprised, when the whole venture falls on its face. 

The title role of Gavin is played by Peter Coates, who is having a very busy and very successful year. Gavin isn’t a new creation, nor is Coates new to the character, having played him before in the 2010 production of Pear Shaped. Yes, some of these characters have lives in another Saker play and Gavin is one of them.

Gavin is a good guy. Not too bright but hard working, he glues the narrative together with sincerity and honesty. His generosity towards his family exposes the heart of the play and allows for a satisfying resolution. Coates is a likeable actor who plays this role straight down the middle, no frills and no frolics. He assembles his stage relationships with care, is unafraid to appear dim or vulnerable and shares his considerable craft freely. Excellent stuff! 

The cast is rounded out by two beautiful cameos: firstly, Robert Owens’s reprise of Giles, Keith’s cycling neighbour, whose madcap entrances, insane lycra costume, cycle helmet and wild-eyed energy is at once Ortonesque and terribly North Shore; secondly, Michael Murphy’s Granddad, who says barely a word, is spoken more about than to, communicates mostly through gesture, is in a retirement home that ‘smells of soup and urine’ and is clearly as sharp as a tack. Both are delicious actualisations of Saker’s fine script, with the tiny observation that, on the night I saw the production, Murphy was having, perhaps, a tad too much fun. 

The technicals are seamless with a special nod to Jed Town’s original music. The set is classy and workable and the costumes – which feature a zippy little AUT University netball uniform, a line of sharp T shirts and Louise Wallace’s attractive High Street couture – are all of an equally high standard.

Anyone who has staged a play will know that it’s an epic journey. The expectations are enormous and the investment, both personal and emotional, by all concerned, is monumental. We expect nothing short of perfection from ourselves and our fellow travellers as we endeavour to create our art.  

One only has to look at the journey travelled by the cast and crew of Hamlet in Christchurch to truly appreciate the possible – and the impossible: two earthquakes resulting in two changes of venue, all props and costumes inaccessible in a room in the red zone of the CBD which required all to be re-made, the death in the February quake of actor Jaime Gilbert who was to play Laertes and was director Robert Gilbert’s son, the extraordinary decision to proceed anyway, and finally Gilbert’s decision to play Laertes himself as a tribute to his son. All this in the context of creating a production of the greatest play in the English language. It seems an impossible task – yet they opened last Thursday. This was a magnificent triumph of the human spirit.

Four hundred and ten years ago William Shakespeare would have agonized his way through the first performance of Hamlet, just as Andy Saker did two nights ago with Gavin Puts Things Straight. No-one is suggesting that this bittersweet comedy is a Hamlet but in many ways it’s the same thing. It is what it is: a delicate and beautifully nurtured piece of art and love is love, and love is indivisible.

Gavin Puts Things Straight isn’t perfect but it’s a delight all the same. It is peopled by characters you will know and recognise – especially so if you’ve ever spent time on the North Shore – and these characters engage in a universal narrative that has moments of pure magic. There is spontaneous laughter and bittersweet poignancy. And there’s plenty of love – and affection. 

So, if you love the theatre and the truth Gavin Puts Things Straight can’t help but please.
It’s art, Jim, exactly as we know it!  
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