So, what’s it like, being a trio of young, keen-as, just-out-of-Toi-Whakaari actors, traipsing up and down EnZed to perform a programme of drama-extracts in provincial high schools? Ria Simmonds, Carrie Green and Andrew Patterson, who recently did just that under the aegis of EnsembleImpact, set out to offer a lively encapsulation of how it was, how it felt, re-enacting themselves (in mildly self-caricatured versions), in a programme of vignettes interspersed with singing and dancing, sometimes parodic.

Premiered at BATS in Wellington during the Fringe Festival, where it won the ‘Best Newcomer’ award, this show has itself come on tour to Palmy North, and maybe to further afield. Could this new touring experience itself be dramatised? This show is not an EnsembleImpact venture; it is supported by sponsors and pledgers. And it works really well.

So could these guys live for long in some of the “Heres” they get to? Invercargill? Bluff?

Heaps of time gets spent in the van driving the road, with the driving shared between Ria and Carrie, and Andrew evidently content to sit in the back seat. They play plenty of verbal games to entertain themselves, react to the passing world outside it (with stunned expletives, passing by the post-’quake Christchurch red zone), laugh at some things and whinge about others. Later on, they compete as to what music’s played on the sound-system, and swear at the GPS route-finder voice, which starts swearing back.

With two girls and a bloke, there’s never any hitting on anyone (“Don’t screw the crew”), nor does the occasional niggle get really hurtful. There are sequences of question-and-answer sessions following performances, with them rating each others’ answers to FAQs. Other sequences reflect their tuning in to television, or to local talk-back radio, in a string of motel units. Andrew recites one of his own poems, in dialect, and way down south at Bluff, a marvellous parody of Lear’s storm speech.

Mostly it’s feel-good. The two girls both move beautifully, and Andrew’s quite good. They all sing well. The dialogue’s often funny. The shifts between sequences are neat, with varying yet never failing pace, indicating smooth directing by Simon Leary.

The set, what there is of it, is simply a cluster of suitcases, middle centre, plus a pack and a handbag, which represent the van, mainly. Nice and transportable. Work with lighting and sound is quite clever, and smooth. It’s a good show.

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I Could Live Here is a slick comedy of vignettes about three actors and their tour of the country in a van visiting secondary schools performing scenes from New Zealand plays. 

Being cooped up together and having known each other through three years of Drama School lead to tensions that are hilariously depicted as they squabble over radio stations to listen to, their performances on stage as well as their personal habits.

Andrew Patterson, Carrie Green, and Ria Simmons perform with great elan as they dance, sing, and get on each other’s nerves (even with Cynthia their guide on GPS), all the way from Invercargill to Northland and just surviving to tell the tale. Great fun with some home truths about acting, personal space, and friendship. 

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What a gem of a show! Not least for the professional skills of its execution, I Could Live Here is a highlight of the Fringe so far for me.

We all know theatre can take you on a journey. Well this play does it almost literally, with generous, honest, insightful and very entertaining humour.

When the dream of setting off on an adventure with your “best friends in all the world” collides with the realities of such an exercise, universal truths about human relationships inevitably arise. Thus this show is a rich minefield that has to be experienced to be appreciated.

Having toured the country (with Arts On Tour NZ) at about the same time this EnsembleImpact cast was on the road (although their gig closer to three months than one) my first thought on seeing the multiple suitcases as bags piled on the stage is: surely they didn’t take all that!

But Holly MacPherson’s set design, lit by Phil Louizo, turns out to evoke the vehicle this trio (they were four in reality) travels in. Supported also by Matt Eller’s sometimes intricate sound design, mostly involving the van’s radio and talking GPS navigator, the devising cast recreates their experience with creative ingenuity and a good dollop of poetic licence.

Those who had the pleasure of seeing EnsembleImpact’s She’ll Be Write last year, will know it opened with Andrew Patterson delivering the prologue to Bruce Mason’s The End of the Golden Weather. Many more will recognise it as Patterson reprises it, in well-penned parody, to set the scene.

A witty mash-up of the biographical notes, presumably from their touring programme, introduces Ria Simmons, Carrie Green and Patterson by sketching in their back-stories. An in-vehicle post-mortem of an early show at a high school establishes what they are up to … And we’re off. 

Lolly-wrapper questions, asked to fill in the time while travelling, are another device for getting to know them – and one or two prove to be set-up for excellent payoffs towards the end. A quiz format both explores and sends up the actor’s process. And at one point Carrie brilliantly elucidates the actor’s eternal dilemma …

The van radio music choices are another means of differentiating characters and generating comical conflict – and sometimes it backs more parodies – e.g. ‘How Bizarre’.  And the interactions with the robotic-voiced GPS become more and more surreal.

Their arrival at a new town is often heralded with talkback radio sequences, brilliantly enacted through host and callers to capture the very different natures of this multi-faceted land and its people.

Andrew treats us to some of the poetry he writes on the road; Carrie invades the van’s small space with poignant – or not – cellphone conversations with her unheard darling partner, which are riddled with subtext; Ria tries to maintain her upbeat positive attitude until she finally blows in a climactic release of pent up feelings.  

Overall, I Could Live Here offers a blissful blend of hyper-naturalism and non-naturalistic theatricality – including song and dance sequences – to capture the nature of an experience we can all relate to, whether or not we have actually done it.

Abetted by the collaborative and directorial eye of Simon Leary, Ria Simmons, Carrie Green and Andrew Patterson have proven their excellence as devisers of a well-structured and modulated play, and as performers, both as an ensemble and as individuals playing to their undoubted strengths.  

They should take this show on tour – pitch it to Arts On Tour NZ. I’m serious. 

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