“Amazing visuals,” is the buzz in the foyer after the world premiere of Hear to See. And the music. And the sound. All stunning. The performers, seen and unseen, do a great job too.

It’s the story, such as it is, that has people grumbling. Too simplistic? Too heavy, or obvious, on the moral? Somehow not very satisfying at the end of a rather gripping journey.

Ollie (Robert Hartley) is fixated on his X-Box. His sister Sophie (Jessica Aaltonen) seems to want his attention despite being permanently plugged into her own headphones. His mate Rimu (Rawiri Jobe), who taps at the window and climbs through when Ollie opens it, has a basketball and wants Ollie to come out and shoot hoops. And his Mum (Cian White, I assume; a voice off), who is annoyed with him for not picking up his uniform, wants him at the dinner table.

This opening sequence is soaked in a cacophony of competing sounds (Thomas Press: a superb soundscape throughout). Encased in a black scrim box, featuring his bed and a sash window in the back wall, Ollie plays his X-Box game with a projection on the front ‘4^th’ wall (AV design, John Nortje).

It is more tapping at – or beyond – the window, and a silent but persistent moth, that turns Ollie around, draws him out of his antisocial space and ultimately reconnects him with the forces of nature; but not before he goes through a Harry Potter-style confrontation with his self in the form of a ‘mini me’ who insists that the only important thing in life is his next X-Box level.

Ollie’s mindless attempt to whack the moth with a pillow offers a rare moment of gut-level connection; many of us treated nature like that as children. His journey into a starlit night is wondrous; the headspace this brings him into, of spinning and dancing stars, is a magical effect. The eye-in-the-sky, the nature of Richard Nunns’ sublime taonga puuoro compositions and a head-tickle from the moth precede Ollie’s discovery of a wooden flute. But he cannot get a peep from it, so throws it away, precipitating the first of many electro-magnetic storms …

Now his cellphone rings and turns – brilliantly – into a ‘micro me’ that later grows to become a ‘mini me’: an especially good piece of puppetry in both form and execution. “Man, you the bomb,” it tells him, perched on Ollie’s shoulder – as a Seagull splats on his other shoulder …

A beach sequence sees Ollie suddenly in the sea (a rather clumsy transition). He strives to get to the safety of a large rock which animates with a formidable Maori female persona (voiced by White). She interacts with an ocean demigod (Jobe) who sings to calm her stroppy highness down. And it is here that Ollie finds the conch shell he has to listen to in order to see, appreciate and become at one with the natural world. But he resists that for a while yet …

Two bits of fire-blackened wood and a large piece of pumice also command his contemplation as his confrontations with his hoodie-wearing self become more life-sized. His ‘mini me’ physically attacks him when he listens to the shell, declaring, “All this Harry Potter stuff is starting to offend me.” (Given HP spends his time battling the forces of evil rather than trying to commune with nature, does this mean Ollie’s alter-ego is offended by his own role in this drama?)

Ollie’s attempts to decode and/or connect with the pumice, the two bits of wood (was that the tapping sound that summoned him from his room in the first place?) and the conch shell (manifestations of earth, air, fire and water?) precipitate another brainstorm, a projected message, “I OWN” – as opposed, presumably, to “I AM” – and a major cacophony of sound before subsiding into a congregation of evaporating vapours, leaving him with the moth and the flute. And at last he gets the hang of the flute, producing a note or two …

Back in his room, Mum is still calling him to the table – and now he is nice to his sister, promising to show her the flute after dinner. And the sounds of his world are altogether more harmonious.

The lighting design of Nigel Percy, the light/sound operating of Laurie Dean, the additional puppetry of stage manager Bek Sherrat (along with that of Aaltonen, Jobe and White) as developed with concept designer and puppetry director Scott Wright, along with Nunns’ music, Press’s sound and Hartley’s performance, all under the overall direction Sara Brodie, have conspired to create a remarkable spectacle. And yet …

The title emerges as an excellent play on words. But can it be that all that performative skill and ‘theatre magic’ has been wrought just to tell us there is more to life than reaching the next level in an X-Box game?

Thinking back, the ‘uniform’ reference must be a clue that Ollie is on the verge of going to high school and this is therefore about the trauma and catharsis of moving on to another level in life. But that is an academic analysis, in retrospect; not one enjoyed in the presence of the performance. Besides, if we are talking generalities – given we never get to know Ollie as anything other than a stereotypical teenage boy – he has doubtless got a few more years of being an anti-social, self-centred brat-cum-prat before the hormones release him into this more humane space.  

As it stands, Hear to See offers an objectively appreciated theatrical spectacle of high accomplishment that falls short of engaging our empathy by offering credible insights into the experience of moving from childhood to adolescence, from intermediate to high school, or from pain-in-the-bum brother/son to someone who is a pleasure to have in the family. So why are we not engaged subjectively?

In attempting to discern what’s missing, we may consider classics of the genre, like J M Barrie’s Peter Pan, which questions the fantasy of an everlasting childhood, or Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, where a naughty child regains his self-esteem by becoming king of all the wild things and getting home again in time for supper. And just last year Capital E produced Rachel Callinan and Kate Morris’s End Game, in which an alienated son and mother reconnect via a life-and-death adventure in cyberspace.

In all these otherwise diverse works the protagonists form important relationships with other people or creatures in the process of reaching their next level of humanity, through which their own personalities are revealed. That Ollie’s battle is with himself is valid, in principle, but in this case it doesn’t deliver subjective insight or emotional catharsis. He functions mostly as and object; a means by which theatrical skills and illusions may be displayed.

Methinks the presentation tail has wagged the storytelling dog.
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