Go Solo is a straight forward concept – each student in the third year course has to bring to fruition a twenty minute solo performance. The students are split into four groups of four resulting in four completely different eighty-minute shows.

Now there is a lot that could be considered in reviewing such work being developed in a drama school environment. I could make some assumptions but in reality I don’t know how each solo fits into each performer’s time at Toi Whakaari, the more in-depth brief, or what each individual wanted to achieve for their 2013 solo show. So I’m not going to guess. Take the following then as one viewpoint of a show that could be analysed in a thousand different ways. 

Group A 

Greta Gregory, Pereri King, Susan Berry, Tom Knowles

Hushed whispers and flickering a flickering torch inside a tent mark the first of the performances we are to see tonight. It is quite some time before we even see Greta Gregory fully but we are kept more than entertained as we see her silhouette and hear her reading from a teen romance (I want to say Twilight but I’m not overly familiar with the series). Needless to say it’s very exciting if only brother Lewis would stop eavesdropping.

Gregory embodies her sixteen year-old self on the last days of a summer family camp. The excited tent banter in the evenings is contrasted with a sullen, dreary, ‘day-time Greta’ who appears much less enthusiastic about life and very much opposed to family enquires. They could be completely different people. This isn’t to say that Gregory goes down the path of clichéd ‘moody teen’, it feels much more nuanced than that and is a great change of pace.

Fortunately we are able to overhear ‘night-time Greta’ again. This time planning her list of things to achieve in the year ahead. It’s in this moment that Gregory perfectly captures the beautiful optimism and excitement of being young and crushing on first loves. Where summer was a time of change and the approaching school year brought an opportunity to re-invent oneself. 

In his performance PEAKS…, Pereri King takes us to his home and considers those he has left behind while studying at Toi Whakaari. We meet aunties, uncles, cousins, and children. They are familiar to King but time away has given him a slightly different perspective. They’re seen in a subtly different light and it’s in this that King discovers they have plenty to teach him and he has plenty to learn.

King weaves a beautiful narrative which shifts between humour, tension, sadness, and hope. 

The second the lights come up on Susan Berry, I’m in love. Staunchly sat in the middle of a bare stage on a plain chair with Kanye blasting through the speakers she commands attention. Journey to the Drive Through is transfixing.

Throughout the performance, Berry, with her exceptional physicality and hip-hop dance skill, works together with the soundtrack to establish a routine; a cycle, that slowly and violently crumbles. Or put another way, the cool, calm, collected, and focused exterior is slowly penetrated by what Berry calls in the programme “voices that are not our own”. This leads to something that becomes quite confronting and (for lack of a better, less overused word) raw. 

And now for something completely different: Holy Hell it’s HOLY HILL!! “The biggest thing since Christianity”. Tom Knowles thrusts us, with his leather clad pelvis, back to the 80s when rock was oh so glamourous.

Knowles introduces us to the four members of Holy Hill – crude lead singer, endearing keyboardist, troubled guitarist, and a drummer who drums but can sing too. The band are just about to go on at Wembley Stadium, thousands of fans are waiting and it’s gonna be massive. But there tensions that are bubbling away behind the music.

Knowles creates four very solid characters with clear objectives that showcase his musical, physical, and vocal diversity. The story is solid too, and entertaining, however there is something amiss. Perhaps for the length of the piece there are too many characters, motivations, and interactions flying about for everything to gel nicely together. In saying the above, it should be noted that Knowles intends to develop this work into a full touring band show for 2014 which would allow the piece the length it deserves.

See also: GROUP B | GROUP C | GROUP D 

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